Last week, Prof. Michaela Draganska, from Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business visited us and presented her research in one of our Research Seminar Series lectures.

Usually, marketing research focuses on several common topics with easily available information, such as transactions, reviews and consumer reports. However, pieces of research on the product itself are surprisingly scarce namely due to difficulties with obtaining relevant data. Michaela and her colleagues attempt to rectify this by exploring the role of product content as a driver of customer subscription behavior.

In a specific setting of a video platform, they observe subscriptions to channels as well as individual paid video downloads and construct content measures which capture amount, quality and congruence of published videos. The findings reveal that these measures indeed have a positive influence on the conversion from a registered member to a paying subscriber. Ultimately, the research shows that curating congruent content is helpful in similar scenarios.

Many thanks to Michaela for the interesting talk and the seminar for our doctoral students.