Idolisation

Although, it is quite clear that music piracy is very extensive and reduces volume of CD sales that record companies were experiencing in the past, there are still reasons that encourage people to buy music. Idolatry is considered to be as one of the main reasons why people still buy music. This is explained in two bodies of literature:

the consumer ethics literature and the social identity theory.

According to the consumer ethics literature, the attribution of harm influences the consumers’ decision to engage in a behaviour that is considered as unethical (Muncy and Vittel, 1992; Fullerton et al., 1996). A consumer is more willing to commit an unethical behaviour when she/he thinks that the provider suffers little or no economic harm from the consumer’s action. Therefore, consumers who believe that music piracy harms their favourite bands/artists may be less likely to engage in music piracy and therefore buy the product.

The empirical research on this hypothesis is however unsupportive. Levin et al.

(2007) examined the effect of harm attribution in the attitude towards illegal downloading and found that it wasn’t significant. In another study, d’ Astous et al.

(2005) tested three different antipiracy arguments among 139 young adults and they concluded with the argument that “harm for the artists” was not significant. Lysonski and Durvasula (2008) showed that the respondents did not alter their illegal downloading intentions, when they were told that illegal downloading hurts the less

financially successful artists. Finally, Chiou et al. (2011) examined the role of artist adoration in interaction with the perceived risk of getting caught through two different scenarios about a music fan named “Allen”. Allen in the first scenario was described as a huge fan of the band Linkin Park and in the second scenario as a music fan of no particular band. The results showed no clear-cut differences in the responses obtained from the two different cases with regards to downloading behaviour.

Following the social identity theory, idolatry can be viewed as a process of identification. According to Madrigal (2001) identification is an individual’s emotional connection or attachment to a sponsored property. Wann et al. (2000) suggest that individuals would become fans of a sports team because of the need of identification.

This can lead them to associate themselves with the team. Therefore, the need to possess related merchandises is a symbol of this identification (Kwon and Armstrong, 2002).

An idol can be an athlete, a politician, a movie star, a pop singer or even a figure in a cartoon or comic (Chiou et al., 2005a). Apart from identification, idolatry can be expressed also through modelling. Modelling reflects the desire to act like the idol. This includes imitative behaviour in terms of dress, hairstyle, speech etc. (Raviv et al., 1996) Since people idolise a singer/band they would enthusiastically gather merchandise related to their idol, and therefore, can be an important factor affecting their willingness to buy their idols music CD instead of obtaining it illegally.

In the empirical literature, Wilson and Sherrel (1993) suggest that people would prefer to purchase CDs because of loyalty to the artist. Ouellet (2007) based on both qualitative and quantitative surveys, found that consumer responses towards a specific performer play an important role in explaining the choice to either buy or illegally download.

Thus, according to the social identity theory, individuals that show high idolatry wish to own commodities related to their idols in order to express identification and support. According to Chiou et al. (2005a) buying legal CDs instead of downloading or buying counterfeit CDs has a special meaning for those who exhibit high idolatry. The copyrighted music CD most of the times provides not only music but also higher quality packaging including photos of the artist/band, lyrics etc. Therefore, according to North and Oishi (2006) buying is not because of the love for music itself but also an example of behavioural evidence. People with high idolatry, even if they had the opportunity to obtain a downloaded/counterfeit edition of the CD of their idol, they still would like to buy the licensed edition for the reasons explained above.

Therefore, a construct to capture idolatry is included and its possible effects on all four channels of music acquisition are considered. Also the effects of idolatry are examined both on general behavioural intention towards music acquisition and on specific intention to acquire the music of their specific artist/band they idolise. The set of hypotheses regarding idolisation are summarised as follows:

H8B: Idolatry positively affects an individuals attitude to buy a specific singer’s/

band’s music CD from bricks-and-mortar stores.

H_8S: Idolatry negatively affects an individuals attitude to buy a specific singer’s/

band’s counterfeit music CD from street vendors.

H_8D: Idolatry positively affects an individuals attitude to buy a specific singer’s/

band’s music CD from Internet music stores.

H8P: Idolatry negatively affects an individuals attitude to download a specific singer’s/ band’s music CD from P2P sites.

Table 3.1 presents each construct’s definition and coding together with their proposed hypothesized relationship.

Table 3.1: Constructs, Definitions, Code Name, and their Hypothesized Relationships

Construct Code Definition Hypothesized

Relationship Attitude ATT refers to the degree to which the performance

of an individual’s behaviour is valued benefits deriving from the acquisition of illegal music products.

refers to an individual’s degree of admiration, identification and modelling behaviour of their favourite singers/bands.

IDL→ ATT

Behavioural

Intention INT refers to an individual’s intention to perform a behaviour.