An Economic Approach to “Sticky Minds” and “Walled Gardens”
📜 Abstract
The ability for a supplier of digital content to gain and hold a captive audience is an important concept that drives many business strategies on the Internet. This paper explains and expands on these strategies using concepts from classical and modern economics, analyzing both text and graphic advertising. The idea is to persuade a potential customer to visit and stay within a particular “walled garden”, increasing the chance that they will become a paying customer. Decay of knowledge that exists in such a world is represented by a Markov chain that makes a transition to a state of pure ignorance at a constant rate. Some interesting applications of computer science in analyzing these competing models for modern online commerce are expanded upon in the conclusion.
✨ Summary
The paper “An Economic Approach to ‘Sticky Minds’ and ‘Walled Gardens’” published by Ian Parberry in 2002, explores the strategies used by digital content suppliers to attract and retain consumers within ‘walled gardens’, utilizing concepts from both classical and modern economics. This work delves into the implications of consumer lock-in and network effects in online markets, applying computer science principles such as Markov chains to model knowledge decay and consumer behavior over time. Extensive web searches yield limited direct citation of this paper in subsequent research literature, indicating its niche application primarily confined to the intersection of economic models and digital market analysis without broader adoption in mainstream economic or technological discourse.