It’s no surprise to see that the majority of online consumers prefer free content, but some categories consumers wouldn’t mind paying for access, according to a new survey from Nielsen.
Nielsen asked more than 27,000 consumers across 52 countries what types of online content they would actually pay for. The survey states that people would most likely pay for content for movies, music, games and television shows. They would not pay for content on social networking Web sites, podcasts or consumer-generated videos and blogs.
Consumers pretty much agreed on the guidelines for content that they would pay for.
- 78 percent said if they are already subscribed to a newspaper, magazine, radio or television service they should be able to use its online content for free.
- At the same time, 71 percent of global consumers say online content of any kind will have to be considerably better than what is currently free before they will pay for it.
- Nearly eight out of every ten won’t use a Web site that charges them, presuming they can find the same information for free.
- As a group, they are ambivalent about whether the quality of online content would suffer if companies could not charge for it.
- But they are far more united in their conviction that once they purchase content, it should be their copy to share with whomever they want to share it with.