The zero-price effect in freemium business models: The moderating effects of free mentality and price–quality inference

For your marketing

Possible founder application

Use this as a pricing or packaging hypothesis and define outcomes to measure; estimate effects with your own customer mix and willingness-to-pay evidence.

Reported result

What the study found

The study identifies two opposing intuitions—free mentality (expecting digital services at no cost) and price–quality inference (expecting higher price to signal higher quality)—and reports that their interplay shapes responses to freemium offers and can help explain low premium conversion.

Research question

What the authors investigated

How do intuitive free-mentality and price–quality-inference processes, and their interaction, affect consumer response and premium conversion in freemium offers?

Design

Two empirical studies: an implicit-association test to identify intuitive responses to zero pricing, followed by a choice-based conjoint study testing free mentality and price–quality inference in freemium offers.

Sample and setting

Digital-service consumers/users; the conjoint context is media streaming. The publisher abstract does not state participant counts on the fetched page.

Scope and transfer

Limitations to keep in view

The publisher page does not state an explicit limitations section or sample-size limitation in the fetched article; therefore no additional limitation is asserted here.

Research sources

The publisher abstract says the framework is tested in two studies, specifies the implicit-association and choice-based-conjoint designs, and identifies media streaming as the conjoint service context; it frames the interaction of the two intuitions as a lever for low premium conversion. Direct publisher-page retrieval was recorded on 2026-10-09; profile summarizes the accessible record and does not claim independent review of inaccessible full text.