The wall street journal has an interesting method of price discrimination. Let me explain: Some of the articles that you click on from the
WSJ homepage are "Subscriber Content," meaning only users who pay a weekly fee can see the entire article. Otherwise, you can only read the first couple of paragraphs, or so it seems... in actuality, all you have to do is copy and paste the title of the article into a Google search, click the WSJ link, and voila. You have access to the entire article.
It turns out that the weekly subscription fee is helping subscribers avoid a couple of clicks and a google search, which amounts to perhaps 10 seconds with a high speed internet connection. If users are reading a high volume of articles, then the time savings might be worth it. But for the majority of us, we can take a few extra seconds to do a Google search.
I would love to know why this is WSJ's strategy and how long it has been this way. I imagine it is an effort to drive more traffic to the site. It is also possible that WSJ subscribers tend to have higher incomes and thus more disposable income to throw around. Still, I am curious what those subscribers would think if they found out they have been paying for access to free content. Will this strategy catch up with WSJ once word spreads? Does anyone know of other media companies doing similar things?
(Hat tip:
Justin S. for sharing this info)
