In a very subjective way, I hate in-app purchases. I guess people can pretty much be divided into two categories - as the article states - those who have a lot of free apps and buy a lot in-app, and those who have more paid apps and don't do in-app purchases. But due to my quite subjective opinion, plus a lit bit of an unofficial survey of people around me, I believe the reason not to be in a limited budget, but in simple principal.
I myself, like quite many people I know, prefer paying for an app once and get all features at my disposal, to being milked for money for several different features along the way. Personally I can state two exceptions to my general behavior during my whole mobile history: Photoshop Express to get all of the features (so far two purchases needed and if they try more, I'll probably uninstall the whole app even though I quite love it), and the other one PicCollage, I got a set of images once.
Especially the in-app purches inside games (where they are most common too, for obvious reasons; it's not like I don't understand the logic behind) are extremely annoying, for it goes to the lowest low in manipulation. It targets the kids. Kids get a nice game, but suddenly unoess parents are willing to pay this or that or... the whole game is pretty much crippled or simply frustrating. Which reminds me of a third exception. Yes, I did ONCE get something extra to this dog care-taking game for my daughter.
In my family, even while playing on the Android tablet that doesn't require a password for purchases, my daughters know better than to go buying anything without permission. But I can imagine that a worst case scenario in any familyis a huge credit card bill due to kids' temptations while playing a game relying heavily on in-app purchases, and thinking they can get away with it.
Set aside greed, or maximizing of profits, which of course is the thing behind business, in my opinion, if an app developer wants to make their app truly appealing - and respected, for that matter! - the most customer-friendly way is to offer a free trial with a limited amount of features (but enough to give a good impression of the app) and a one-purchase-only paid full version of the app. This way even a little bit higher price (than a couple euros/dollars) is easily justified, and an easier decicion for the customer since they don't need to worry about spending on something they don't like after all.
Predictors of In-App Purchases? Not Having Paid Apps And Playing Lots of Games, Apsalar Finds
http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/20/apsalar-study/
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