Week 7 – Framing Questions

1. In “Free,” the author discusses the idea of “no cost, no commitment.” He discusses how when products have a small monetary value attached, even as low as a dollar, people consume differently because they view the product as more valuable. To put this idea into real-life context, The Boston Globe recently decided to start charging online readers a subscription fee in order to gain access to all of the newspaper’s content. However, a sister-website will remain at no-cost with breaking news and sports. Anderson argues that by offering a free product, companies are trying to maximize the reach of the product/service, while charging a price could have counter effects. Based on these ideas, is The Boston Globe making a smart decision to charge readers to gain full-access? Is the sister-website really enough to entice users to continue to the visit the site? How will the idea of no cost, no commitment affect the third-party system in regards to advertisers?

2. The author talks about the “max strategy,” or saturating several outlets and channels with content in order to reach the largest audience possible. In many cases, society has seen this backfire with songs being over played and TV shows/movies being over-hyped. Is it really beneficial (in regards to promotion) to saturate every channel to reach the largest audience possible and risk over exposure?

3.  Towards the end of the book, Anderson discusses the top ten objections to the idea of “Free.” Number 1o states: Free is breeding a generation that doesn’t value anything. Growing up a digital natives, do we really tend to devalue the information online, or is this another stereotype that is part of criticism of Gen-Y?

Tags: Christ Anderson, free, Gen-Y, Max Strategy, No Commitment, No Cost