What do the stock market prediction, medical diagnosis, employee selection, electrical demand prediction and personalization all have in common? They are all labor intensive. But do they have to be?
Deep Learning (DL) could be – and to some extent already is – the answer to various human labor intensive tasks. Deep learning is a subsection of machine learning that “focuses on computational models for information representation that exhibit similar characteristics to that of the neocortex”. (Arel et al., 2010).
The video game market is huge. In 2014, the global market for PC and console games was valued at 46.5 billion US$ (Statista, 2016). Steam – the largest PC gaming platform – had just over 6000 games in its library at the end of 2015. This number has grown significantly given that there were roughly 3700 games in the Steam library in 2014 (Makuch, 2015). Add to this the price of games which usually ranges anywhere from $15 – $60 and you will understand why the industry has grown so large. But what if you’re a broke but charitable student? Surely there must be a way to get your fix of new games, without breaking the bank?
Pay what you want (PWYW) pricing has been in existence for some time. The mechanism allows consumers to pay whatever they value the good at, often including zero as a price. Hotel, flight and car rental comparison site priceline.com has made use of the mechanism since its conception in 1997. From there on many industries have empowered their clients to decide the amount they are willing to fork over. The pricing mechanism has spread to amongst other the game industry (humblebundle.com), software industry (stacksocial.com) but also more analogue industries like restaurants (TRUST, Amsterdam) and movie theatres (Popcorn as Anything, Newtown Australia). The PWYW mechanism came under great attention in 2007 when Radiohead invited consumers to buy a digital copy of their album In Rainbows. In an interview with Music Ally, Radiohead’s Head of Business Affairs Jane Dyball “confirms that Radiohead had made more money before ‘In Rainbows’ was physically released than they made in total on the previous album Hail To the Thief.” (Music Ally, 2008). Obviously, consumers are willing to pay for something that they could obtain for free. But why would they?
Consumer Value Creation 