Information can be understood as what you know (or what the company knows about you) or it can be understood as something which is coded into the computer, as bytes, as data. Please try and make a distinction between these two aspects.
Marginal cost and marginal cost zero
Marginal cost refers to how much it will cost to produce a new individual object (product) from the manufacturing line. It refers to the material and labour involved in production. It is a principle of economics that when competition is fierce and there is no difference between the competitors and their products, the price at which the product is sold will go down toward its marginal cost. The marginal cost of a digital product is in practice zero. In practical terms copying a digital product costs nothing. This feature of marginal cost zero is key to understanding why digital products and services behave differently in the market compared with traditional physical products.
Rivalry vs non-rivalry
In economics a good is said to be rivalrous or rival if its consumption by one consumer prevents simultaneous consumption by other consumers,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalry_(economics) This is another and complementary way to look at what a digital product is like.
The lecture video´s
We start with some definitions
And continue by looking at characteristics of information and what follows from it.
Because of the marginal cost zero feature of information avoiding commodotization becomes essential. Exagerating on this one could almost argue that avoiding competition should be your particular task and especially so, when working with information based services. Here are a few ways of doing that.
Lets put the definitions and theory into practical cases and see how it plays out. Here are two cases. On the discussion board you can share with others cases of your own.
Literature
1 Earning with Information
Shapiro, Carl; Varian, Hal R. Information Rules – A strategic Guide to the Network Economy, Harvard Business School Press 1999
The Digital Landscape 