Bloatware and Jailbreaking: Strategic Impacts of Consumer-Initiated Modification of Technology Products

Hasan Cavusoglu (), Huseyin Cavusoglu () and Xianjun Geng ()
Additional contact information
Hasan Cavusoglu: Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z2, Canada;
Huseyin Cavusoglu: Jindal School of Management, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas 75080;
Xianjun Geng: A. B. Freeman School of Business, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana 70118

Information Systems Research, 2020, vol. 31, issue 1, 240-257

Abstract: Many consumer electronics devices are sold bundled with unwanted applications—called bloatware —that provide an additional revenue stream to device manufacturers but deteriorate the value of purchased devices for consumers. Consumers, in response, find technical means to modify purchased devices—called jailbreaking —to remove those applications, thereby reducing the anticipated bloatware revenue for manufacturers. From the perspective of a monopolistic firm that manufactures a consumer electronic device and can preinstall a third-party app for a fee, we investigate whether bloatware inclusion is a viable strategy and how the firm should price its product with bloatware given that consumers can remove bloatware from the product after purchase. We show that it is not always optimal for the firm to sell a bloatware-included product. Furthermore, our analysis reveals that even if the firm can make it harder for consumers to jailbreak, the firm is not always better off by doing so. Consumers do not necessarily benefit from the reduced cost of jailbreaking either. Because the firm passes part of the bloatware revenue to consumers in the form of a lower price, whenever bloatware inclusion benefits the firm, consumers also benefit. Finally, we confirm that our results are robust to alternative modeling assumptions.

Keywords: bloatware; jailbreaking; rooting; pricing; economics of IS; game theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2019.0883 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:orisre:v:31:y:2020:i:1:p:240-257

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Information Systems Research from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().