When organizations in the cultural industries seek new business models: a case study of the french online press

International audienceCreative industries face a constantly changing competitive environment: dematerialized transactions, market extensions, new offerings, and new customer relations. As a result, constant innovations in organization arrangements and business models have become a key competitive advantage and put at stake the traditional models. They frequently refer to unknown articulation between the free-of-charge offerings and variety of original pricing strategies. The case of the press is quite symptomatic of that standpoint. From the empirical analysis of 149 press French websites, the paper substantiates the co-existence of three classes of online BMs: "A minima Digital", "Pure Players" and "Exploring Leaders". It puts forward the original mechanisms for the gratis content funding in the press industry. These results are in tune with observations made in other countries and confirm our basic assumption regarding the variety of existing business model and the elements shaping their diversity