Perceived Subjective Features of Software Components: Consumer Behavior in a Software Component Market

Abstract

Component-based software. reuse has been generally regarded as a promising approach to improving software productivity and quality within software development. However, progress in component-based software reuse has been slower than expected. Much of the software reuse literature points to the lack of software components that can maximize users' benefits as the most important source of the slow progress. Considering that the underlying processes behind component-based software reuse are strikingly similar to commercial software marketing, this paper attempts to identify the aspects of software components that consumers value and to establish relationships between the identified aspects and consumer behavior in the software component market. More specifically, this paper focuses on the perceived subjective features of software components. This study was conducted in a web-based artificial market environment called "SofTrade.