Consumer Behaviour of Young People in the Music Industry : A comparative approach between Sweden and Spain

Abstract: Internet had undergone a revolution in almost all the markets of the world in many differentaspects. Even every time the Internet is adopted by more people, it is still perceived as risky.However, young people have started to trust on it little by little, changing their consumerbehaviour, and so they have become the target segment for many marketers in this newscenario.The music industry has not been an exception of the Internet revolution; actuallymusic industry is one of the most affected by it. An important change of this market hasbeen in the way that the music is supplied to the final consumers; these consumers are usingthree main channels to acquire their music: by paying, by free legal access and by illegalsources.The purpose of this thesis is try to figure out which channel is the most used by youngpeople as well as their reasons of their choice and their opinions about it. Moreover, onesocio-demographic profile of the typical consumer of each channel is going to be given.This research was done in two different countries: Spain and Sweden. The resultsshowed that, even with the illegality problem, the most used channels were the legal ones:the by paying one in Sweden and the free legal access one in Spain. Moreover, it can beperceived many differences between the ways of procuring music between both countries.This thesis is useful for music companies to have a better knowledge of its costumersand to know how they could change their strategies to fight against the illegal sources. Italso gives information about all the procurement process of music, from the need of musicto the post-procurement behaviour.