In-App Purchases

Business / By / September 5, 2023

In-app purchases allow apps to offer digital goods or services for users to purchase within the app. These microtransactions enhance user engagement, generate revenue, and provide personalization. However, developers face challenges in pricing strategies and user resistance, requiring compliance with regulations to ensure a successful monetization model.

Characteristics:

  • Digital Goods: Offering digital items or services within the app.
  • Microtransactions: Small payments for virtual items or features.
  • Convenience: Seamless and easy purchase process for users.
  • Revenue Stream: Generating revenue for app developers.

Use Cases:

  • Mobile Games: Unlocking game levels or purchasing virtual items.
  • Subscriptions: Offering premium content or services via subscriptions.
  • Digital Content: Buying ebooks, music, or video content within apps.

Examples:

  • Candy Crush: In-game purchases for power-ups and extra lives.
  • Spotify: Premium subscription for ad-free music streaming.
  • Kindle: Buying and reading ebooks on the Kindle app.

Benefits:

  • Monetization: Generating revenue without relying on ads.
  • User Engagement: Increasing user engagement and retention.
  • Personalization: Customizing app experience with purchased items.

Challenges:

  • Monetization Strategy: Developing effective pricing strategies.
  • User Resistance: Overcoming user reluctance to spend on virtual items.
  • Regulatory Compliance: Adhering to app store guidelines and regulations.

Key Highlights:

  • In-App Purchases Overview: In-app purchases enable apps to offer digital goods or services that users can buy within the app itself. These microtransactions enhance user engagement, generate revenue, and allow for personalization.
  • Characteristics:
    • Digital Goods: Apps provide digital items or services for purchase.
    • Microtransactions: Small payments for virtual features or items.
    • Convenience: Users can easily make purchases within the app.
    • Revenue Stream: App developers generate revenue through in-app purchases.
  • Use Cases:
    • Mobile Games: Users can unlock levels or buy virtual items in games.
    • Subscriptions: Apps offer premium content or services through subscription models.
    • Digital Content: Ebooks, music, or videos are sold within relevant apps.
  • Examples:
    • Candy Crush: In-game purchases for power-ups and extra lives.
    • Spotify: Premium subscription for ad-free music streaming.
    • Kindle: Purchasing and reading ebooks via the Kindle app.
  • Benefits:
    • Monetization: Apps generate revenue beyond relying solely on ads.
    • User Engagement: In-app purchases boost user engagement and retention.
    • Personalization: Purchased items allow users to customize their app experience.
  • Challenges:
    • Monetization Strategy: Developers must create effective pricing strategies for virtual items.
    • User Resistance: Overcoming users’ reluctance to spend on intangible virtual items.
    • Regulatory Compliance: Adhering to app store guidelines and regulations is crucial for success.

Connected Business Concepts

Revenue Modeling

revenue-model-patterns
Revenue model patterns are a way for companies to monetize their business models. A revenue model pattern is a crucial building block of a business model because it informs how the company will generate short-term financial resources to invest back into the business. Thus, the way a company makes money will also influence its overall business model.

Pricing Strategies

pricing-strategies
A pricing strategy or model helps companies find the pricing formula in fit with their business models. Thus aligning the customer needs with the product type while trying to enable profitability for the company. A good pricing strategy aligns the customer with the company’s long term financial sustainability to build a solid business model.

Dynamic Pricing

static-vs-dynamic-pricing

Price Sensitivity

price-sensitivity
Price sensitivity can be explained using the price elasticity of demand, a concept in economics that measures the variation in product demand as the price of the product itself varies. In consumer behavior, price sensitivity describes and measures fluctuations in product demand as the price of that product changes.

Price Ceiling

price-ceiling
A price ceiling is a price control or limit on how high a price can be charged for a product, service, or commodity. Price ceilings are limits imposed on the price of a product, service, or commodity to protect consumers from prohibitively expensive items. These limits are usually imposed by the government but can also be set in the resale price maintenance (RPM) agreement between a product manufacturer and its distributors. 

Price Elasticity

price-elasticity
Price elasticity measures the responsiveness of the quantity demanded or supplied of a good to a change in its price. It can be described as elastic, where consumers are responsive to price changes, or inelastic, where consumers are less responsive to price changes. Price elasticity, therefore, is a measure of how consumers react to the price of products and services.

Economies of Scale

economies-of-scale
In Economics, Economies of Scale is a theory for which, as companies grow, they gain cost advantages. More precisely, companies manage to benefit from these cost advantages as they grow, due to increased efficiency in production. Thus, as companies scale and increase production, a subsequent decrease in the costs associated with it will help the organization scale further.

Diseconomies of Scale

diseconomies-of-scale
In Economics, a Diseconomy of Scale happens when a company has grown so large that its costs per unit will start to increase. Thus, losing the benefits of scale. That can happen due to several factors arising as a company scales. From coordination issues to management inefficiencies and lack of proper communication flows.

Network Effects

network-effects
A network effect is a phenomenon in which as more people or users join a platform, the more the value of the service offered by the platform improves for those joining afterward.

Negative Network Effects

negative-network-effects
In a negative network effect as the network grows in usage or scale, the value of the platform might shrink. In platform business models network effects help the platform become more valuable for the next user joining. In negative network effects (congestion or pollution) reduce the value of the platform for the next user joining. 

Other Pricing Examples

Premium Pricing

premium-pricing-strategy
The premium pricing strategy involves a company setting a price for its products that exceeds similar products offered by competitors.

Price Skimming

price-skimming
Price skimming is primarily used to maximize profits when a new product or service is released. Price skimming is a product pricing strategy where a company charges the highest initial price a customer is willing to pay and then lowers the price over time.

Productized Services

productized-services
Productized services are services that are sold with clearly defined parameters and pricing. In short, that is about taking any product and transforming it into a service. This trend has been strong as the subscription-based economy developed.

Menu Costs

menu-costs
Menu costs describe any cost that a business must absorb when it decides to change its prices. The term itself references restaurants that must incur the cost of reprinting their menus every time they want to increase the price of an item. In an economic context, menu costs are expenses that are incurred whenever a business decides to change its prices.

Price Floor

price-floor
A price floor is a control placed on a good, service, or commodity to stop its price from falling below a certain limit. Therefore, a price floor is the lowest legal price a good, service, or commodity can sell for in the market. One of the best-known examples of a price floor is the minimum wage, a control set by the government to ensure employees receive an income that affords them a basic standard of living.

Predatory Pricing

predatory-pricing
Predatory pricing is the act of setting prices low to eliminate competition. Industry dominant firms use predatory pricing to undercut the prices of their competitors to the point where they are making a loss in the short term. Predatory prices help incumbents keep a monopolistic position, by forcing new entrants out of the market.

Price Ceiling

price-ceiling
A price ceiling is a price control or limit on how high a price can be charged for a product, service, or commodity. Price ceilings are limits imposed on the price of a product, service, or commodity to protect consumers from prohibitively expensive items. These limits are usually imposed by the government but can also be set in the resale price maintenance (RPM) agreement between a product manufacturer and its distributors. 

Bye-Now Effect

bye-now-effect
The bye-now effect describes the tendency for consumers to think of the word “buy” when they read the word “bye”. In a study that tracked diners at a name-your-own-price restaurant, each diner was asked to read one of two phrases before ordering their meal. The first phrase, “so long”, resulted in diners paying an average of $32 per meal. But when diners recited the phrase “bye bye” before ordering, the average price per meal rose to $45.

Anchoring Effect

anchoring-effect
The anchoring effect describes the human tendency to rely on an initial piece of information (the “anchor”) to make subsequent judgments or decisions. Price anchoring, then, is the process of establishing a price point that customers can reference when making a buying decision.

Pricing Setter

price-setter
A price maker is a player who sets the price, independently from what the market does. The price setter is the firm with the influence, market power, and differentiation to be able to set the price for the whole market, thus charging more and yet still driving substantial sales without losing market shares.

Read Next: Pricing Strategy.

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About The Author

Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
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