An Empirical Investigation of a Digital Platform’s Release Strategy for Serialized Content

Using data from an online book platform, we investigate three release strategies for serialized digital content: simultaneous (releasing the entire content of a book at once), sequential (releasing the content of a book over time), and hybrid release. These release strategies impact the platform’s revenue through two opposing effects: binge consumption and product exploration. The simultaneous release of a book can induce binge consumption, which gets consumers hooked, leading to a larger number of its chapters being purchased. The sequential release of a book encourages consumers to visit the platform more frequently to purchase its newly released chapters, thereby increasing their exploration of other books. We estimate a model of consumers’ platform visits and purchases that allows for both these effects. Our counterfactual analysis shows that sequential release yields higher revenue than simultaneous release. Platform revenue is maximized with a hybrid release, in which the first 40% of the book’s chapters are released simultaneously, and the rest are released sequentially. A hybrid release approach turns binge consumption and product exploration into complementary effects. The simultaneous release of the first 40% of a book’s chapters induces binge consumption, which hooks consumers; the sequential release of its remaining chapters keeps them coming back to the platform, leading to exploration of other books.

History: Tat Chan served as the senior editor.

Funding: N. Mehta acknowledges financial support from SSHRC [Grant 506588]. M. Shi acknowledges financial support from the HKUST Yuk-Shee Chan Professorship Fund.

Conflict of Interest Statement: All authors certify that they have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest or nonfinancial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.

Supplemental Material: The web appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2023.0308.