To Bundle or Not to Bundle? How Western European Newspapers Package Their Online Content

This article tries to reveal why some newspaper Web sites rely on subscriptions, whereas others (also) offer pay-per-view. To that end, this study applies logit analysis to a unique dataset on 82 national newspapers from 8 countries. It was found that quality newspapers are more likely to offer site subscriptions and pay-per-view, whereas newspapers with a higher offline market share prefer Portable Document Format (PDF) subscriptions. On the country level, a higher relative importance of advertising revenues is negatively related with the former 2 access options, and positively with the latter. Indications of mimicking or herd behavior were also found. Finally, the newspapers studied apparently see site and PDF subscriptions as substitutes, and site subscriptions and pay-per-view as complements