This article makes two different but related contributions to marketing theory and
practice. The initial objective was to make a contribution to the debate about the nature
of digital content marketing building on and extending the seminal contribution by
Kosio-Kantilla, specifically by considering the marketplace and its dynamics across a
wide range of categories of digital content with a view to understanding the inherent
characteristics of digital content and the consequences for the marketing of digital
content. In this context, the article also seeks to draw together earlier work on specific
types of digital content, such as music and newspapers and magazines. The article
builds the argument for acknowledgement that the marketing of digital content is
different in a number of respects to the marketing of other services and products due
to the elusive nature of its core component, information. The digitisation of content
has had significant consequences for the software, media and publishing industries.
The second contribution to marketing theory and practice emerges from the
analysis embedded in the article. Customers have difficulty in fixing notions of
“value” in relation to digital content. This raises concerns about the fragility of the