Pricing and monetization · Large-scale randomized field experiment with an app firm comparing hard versus soft landing paywalls and exclusive secondary offerings; supplemented by a firm customer survey, a Prolific experiment, a second field experiment, robustness checks, and implementation of the best-performing strategy.
From Free to Paid: Monetizing a Non-Advertising-Based App
Jingcun Cao, Pradeep Chintagunta, Shibo Li (2023). From Free to Paid: Monetizing a Non-Advertising-Based App. Journal of Marketing Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/00222437221131562
Plain-English take
Soft landing and exclusive secondary offerings each reduced existing users' willingness to subscribe, but their interaction was positive. A second field experiment produced consistent results, and the paper reports the firm's implementation of the best-performing strategy.
How much weight to give this
4/5 Field experiment with bounded scope
The 1–5 evidence-check score is a practical reading aid, not a formal peer review or a probability that a conclusion is true. It combines design strength (2 points), sample reporting (1), comparison/control clarity (1), and how much of the paper could be checked (1). Access affects how confidently this directory can assess a study, not the study's underlying quality. Blinding is reported separately because it is not relevant to every design.
Large-scale randomized field experiment with an app firm comparing hard versus soft landing paywalls and exclusive secondary offerings; supplemented by a firm customer survey, a Prolific experiment, a second field experiment, robustness checks, and implementation of the best-performing strategy.
Existing users of the app firm in the randomized field experiments; the accessible publisher abstract does not report the experiment sample sizes.
See the full paper for comparison conditions and analysis.
Publisher page checked; full-text methods not independently reviewed.
Double-blind? Blinding was not established from the checked publisher page.
Research question
What the authors investigated
What does from free to paid: monetizing a non-advertising-based app show about customer decisions or business outcomes?
Design
Large-scale randomized field experiment with an app firm comparing hard versus soft landing paywalls and exclusive secondary offerings; supplemented by a firm customer survey, a Prolific experiment, a second field experiment, robustness checks, and implementation of the best-performing strategy.
Sample and setting
Existing users of the app firm in the randomized field experiments; the accessible publisher abstract does not report the experiment sample sizes.
Reported result
What the study found
Soft landing and exclusive secondary offerings each reduced existing users' willingness to subscribe, but their interaction was positive. A second field experiment produced consistent results, and the paper reports the firm's implementation of the best-performing strategy.
This is a paraphrase of the source. Check the original paper for definitions, estimates, statistical uncertainty and analysis details.
Scope and transfer
Limitations to keep in view
The accessible publisher page did not provide a detailed author-stated limitations section; avoid generalizing beyond the reported study context. Full article methods and correction history were not independently reviewed.
Possible founder application
Use this study as a bounded example of from free to paid: monetizing a non-advertising-based app; assess whether its population, intervention and outcome match your own decision.
Evidence access
Publisher article page; full-text access varies and was not established in this check.
Publisher page directly retrieved; candidate metadata and reported result checked against that page. Full methods were not independently reviewed.
If only an abstract or metadata was available, the profile is limited to claims supported there. A paper's paywall does not change its evidentiary status, but it limits what we can substantiate from accessible text.