Sirkeci, I.,

From Digital Culture & Society

The article ‘Understanding illegal music downloading in the UK: a multi-attribute model.’ By Ibriham Sirkeci and Loa Bara Magnusdottir (2011), explains the issue of downloading music illegally. The study examines different products that attribute to purchasing music. The authors point out that consumers have many outlets to purchase music legally. Therefore, the authors ask the question: why do consumers download music illegally in the UK? They use the multi-attribute model to answer their question. The data in this study was collected through an online survey, and detailed questions were asked to identify certain individuals. Three sets of questions were included in the survey, and they evaluated the participant’s beliefs of illegal music downloading. The survey revealed if consumers wouls rather purchase music or illegally download it. The data was collected through eight product-related questions.

The articles main argument begins with the authors discussing the rates of people downloading music through unauthorized sites. This information is important to understand how many people are involved. Also, why the authors question of ‘understanding illegal music downloading in the UK’ is significant. Following this, the authors discuss the music industry as well as the sales the industry has accumulated through online music downloading. They address the issue that the music industry has lost a great deal of money to illegal downloading. Next, Sirkeci and Magnusdot (2011) bring attention towards the marketing of digital music and how little studies have analyzed the marketing of digital music. Finally, the authors focus on unauthorized music downloading. They state that “Some researchers have found that personal degree of morality is negatively correlated with illegal music downloading and that magnitude of consequences, and that social consensus is very important in influencing the consumer's decision.” (Sirkeci and Magnusdot, 2011)

The authors adress that when discussing consumer behavior, as they are in this study, the multi-attribute theory and the decision making model are often used. The study uses the multi-attribute model to explore the role of product-specific aspects in the decision making process. The authors want to explore why consumers illegally download music when there are many outlets that allow music to be downloaded legally. The respondents of the survey were asked to indicate the level of importance they attribute to each question. They also evaluated their level of satisfaction with those attributes, illegal and legal music downloading.

The authors hypothesized that the characteristics of participants will influence their decision to illegally download music. Their characteristics include, age, gender, education, income and place of residence. Their findings proved that consumer's individual characteristics are important in the decision making process. The findings of the study state that nearly, two-thirds of respondents admitted to downloading music from unauthorized sources. A third prefers to download illegally while another third prefers digital stores. Using the attribute model the authors examined both groups of people who prefer to download music illegally and those who do not.

This article has a variety of strengths and weaknesses. The strengths this article has is that it is a rare study that has not been completed by many researchers. The question of ‘why people prefer to illegally download music in the UK?’ has not been asked before. Many studies related to music downloading only focus on researching students and their decisions to download music illegally. However, this study uses a variety of participants with different characteristics. The participant demographics are diverse in many areas including: age, gender, education, income and place of residence.

The weaknesses in this article that the authors point out are the model they used to commence the study. The authors state that the decision-making model has many limitations, however they used it as it provided them with adequate information. Finally, the authors must understand that web-surveys have some limitations as well. Respondents may not provide honest answers, therefore researchers should be cautious.