Exploring Online Piracy Intentions and Possibilities for Converting Pirates into Paying Customers

Abstract

Objectives The main objective of this study was to map out consumer intentions for online piracy so that businesses and intellectual property owners could take this information into consideration when designing services and products in a way that minimizes the negative effects of piracy.

Summary A quantitative questionnaire was conducted with 220 responses, most of which were from young Finnish students and computer game enthusiasts. The survey consisted of questions related to various aspects of online piracy and paying for digital content. The results were analysed using IBM SPSS 25. The results indicated that piracy is often not a pricing problem, but rather a service or product -related problem.

Conclusions It was discovered that converting pirates into paying customers is indeed possible. Consumers are more likely to pirate products if the legitimate ver-sion is not easily available, if they want to test the product before committing to a purchase, if the pirated version is superior, if they have low moral obliga-tion against piracy and if they have pirated in the past. The findings also suggest that income is not a significant factor in determining piracy behav-iour. Businesses and intellectual property owners should actively research why their products are being pirated and try to use the pirates as a source of valuable market insight for developing better products in the future.