Free: The future of a radical price by Chris Anderson
(Hyperion, NY-USA, 2009)
Chris Anderson talks about how marketing has evolved in the 21st century and how companies like Google, Facebook and the likes succeed by giving out their products for free. Anderson talks about how companies create great customer relationships by giving out free products. These relationships then help them in earning money at a later point.
As we switch to the digital era, we are chaging the actual economics of charging for products. As we know, the cost of production for digital products is close to zero. Thus by the laws of economics, the price of the products should fall to zero as well. That is how 'bits' based company give out their products for free. In the bits world, every year producing products gets cheaper because most of the human jobs get replaced by algorithms. It reduces a major part of the production price.
The question this book attempts to answer is how companies make money from the power of "Free"? An interesting question with a number of interesting stories. Overall, a good read. I would recommend it to any one planning to start or wanting to suceed in a 'bits' business and business students.
