Free products and services have increased tremendously in the last decade as a market ing technique and business strategy. We can observe this trend in the academic literature as well. In this exploratory literature review, we are interested in the different themes of this research area and how they have changed through time. We create a structural topic model (STM) to identify the underlying themes. An STM allows us to incorporate metadata into the model. This way, we can observe how the topics evolve depending on the publication year of the article. The study includes 279 academic papers from 1976 until 2022. We survey an increasing trend of themes situated in a digital world, especially for freemium products, and research concerning online consumer behavior. We identify two categories to classify free products; free products used as a marketing technique and free products as part of a business strategy.
Date of Award | 2 Feb 2023 |
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Original language | English |
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Awarding Institution | - Universidade Católica Portuguesa
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Supervisor | Miguel Godinho de Matos (Supervisor) |
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- Free product
- Free sample
- Free trial
- Freemium
- Structural topic model
- Literature review
- Exploratory analysis
- Mestrado em Gestão e Administração de Empresas
Exploratory literature review on free products: a structural topic model approach
Decoene, E. (Student). 2 Feb 2023
Student thesis: Master's Thesis