Customization or jailbreaking for bloatware: strategic impacts of consumer-initiated behavior of software products

Abstract

Bloatware refers to software that contains unwanted plug-ins. Jailbreak software aims to eliminate these undesirable components and enhance the flexibility of bloatware, while custom software is specifically tailored to fulfill individual customer requirements. In contrast to previous research, our study addresses the challenge of proposing two strategies to mitigate bloatware inadaptability: jailbreak and customization. Some interesting conclusions were drawn. Firstly, when customization costs are low and the degree of customization is high, users tend to purchase bloatware at a lower price rather than opting for the expected high-priced customized software, indicating that consumers do not prefer the high premiums associated with extensive customization. Moreover, when users’ effort and the positive benefits of jailbreaking are low, they surprisingly choose to pay a higher price for jailbroken software. This phenomenon challenges the conventional view that jailbreaking is typically regarded as a low-cost alternative sought by users. Secondly, due to the larger user base in the jailbreak market compared to the bloatware market, there exists a market vacuum that can be capitalized on by jailbreak software vendors. It is worth noting that the profit margins in the jailbreak market tend to be higher than those in the bloatware market, indicating the disruptive influence of small firms resembling jailbreak vendors on the software industry. Despite the presence of established bloatware companies, jailbreak vendors still manage to capture a significant share of the overall profits. Thirdly, our research findings indicate that user jailbreak behavior leads to the highest consumer surplus. Finally, we conducted a comprehensive case study analyzing the impact of different user behavior strategies on software enterprises’ revenue in the context of bloatware, customized, and jailbroken apps specific to Apple’s platform.