Stop the Music! How Advertising Can Help Stop College Students from Downloading Music Illegally

Digital-music piracy takes a heavy toll on the music industry and the US economy. Losses are measured in the tens of billions of dollars.

Stop the Music! How Advertising Can Help Stop College Students from Downloading Music Illegally

Brian Sheehan and James Tsao

Syracuse University

James Pokrywczynski

Marquette University

Management slant

  • This was a four-phase study that identified motivations for illegal music downloading among college students over a 2-year period, confirmed them quantitatively, and tested advertising concepts for their ability to significantly change behavior.
  • Three key motivations were identified: economic utility, collection utility, and social utility. Of the three, social utility was a new and powerful insight.
  • Of numerous advertising concepts tested to impact these utilities and change illegal downloading behavior, two...

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