Mobile content subscribers more loyal claims study

Research from the International University of Japan claims that mobile content subscribers are more loyal than internet content subscribers.

The study - 'Consumer Loyalty and Willingness to Pay for Service Attributes Across Digital Channels' - is the work of Professor Philip Sugai and Professor Donghun Kim at the university.

It compared how loyal Japanese consumers are to free and subscription-based content on PC and mobile internet, based on a survey of 400 people.

It tested their loyalty by asking how much they'd be willing to pay to remain loyal to their current PC or mobile content sites, including Yahoo Japan and Disney. It seems mobile won.

"The mobile platform has regularly been considered an "inferior" platform to the PC since the launch of mobile data services," says Sugai. "But these results clearly show that this is not the case, especially in terms of one of the key drivers of firm profitability; loyalty."

The obvious caveat is that the study focused on Japan, where mobile internet use is if anything more trusted than PC-based internet use. Would its findings translate to the west? It's open to question.

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