Micropayments Data Point of the Day

Joe Brancatelli reports on airline fliers’ stubborn refusal to pay even a nominal sum for wifi:

Passengers “want to be connected, [but] they want it to be free,” Doug Murri, Southwest Airlines senior manager of technologies, told a group of airline and entertainment executives this past summer. Alaska Airlines, testing the same satellite-based WiFi system as Southwest, reports that passenger usage plummets when it charges a fee. The higher the fee, the faster the decline. “Even when we charge $1—and we did try $1—we see a drop-off in people willing to pay,” Alaska Airlines executive Craig Chase recently told the Wall Street Journal.

There’s a lesson here for anybody wanting to put a paywall around their website. Fliers are perfectly happy to pay $7 for a copy of the Economist to read on the plane, or even $4 for a copy of People magazine. And I’m sure if they spent their flight on the internet they would claim to value that experience at least as much as the experience of reading a single magazine. But getting them over the hump of paying anything at all for web content is still turning out to be all but impossible.

Comments

[berated:]

Interesting; this supports my own experiences when faced with the decision purchase wifi on a plane. I'm wondering if airlines would see more buyers if they added it as an option while buying a ticket (much like they offer seat upgrades or trip insurance)? Or, sold subscriptions or set quantities of access (and at a *reasonable* price--reasonable being $1 - $2 per flight).

Nov 13 06:18 AM

[Roger Knights:]

"getting them over the hump of paying anything at all for web content is still turning out to be all but impossible."

This demonstrates that micropayments need to be opt-out decisions, not opt-ins. That is, there should be a warning notice posted on any pay site that gives the reader five or ten seconds to opt out before the meter starts.

This means the facility would best be incorporated in an official standard for all browsers.

Nov 13 01:50 PM

[Rokjok777:]

Put $5 on top of the cost of the ticket and people will all do it. Email them an access code. Geez these people are real Einstein's....

Nov 13 03:10 PM