Along the same lines, most companies now want "subscriptions" to their product. Customer subscriptions are highly sought after.
For example, toothpicks are perishable (or maybe more accurately consumable), but there are a lot of toothpick brands to choose from. Wouldn't it be nice if you could lock in a customer to recurring purchases of just your brand? Enter subscriptions. You see it happening all the time, everywhere.
On Amazon "subscribe and save" to any household perishable good. Microsoft replacing its corporate HUP program (which let you buy full office for $10) with a bogus replacement that just lets you get discounted subscriptions to 365. And of course, the most egregious offender, Adobe Creative Cloud.
Durable products, be they physical or software, are great for consumers but bad for companies. Hence, companies are moving away from them.
“Wouldn't it be nice if you could lock in a customer to recurring purchases of just your brand? Enter subscriptions.“ Yes, reminds me of things like dollarshaveclub, Harry’s, quip.
The unexplored dimension in this space (particularly in hardware) is whether a migration to a subscription model can improve material re-use (aka reverse logistics, cradle-to-cradle, etc.). For example, I’m afraid of giving up my years old durable phone/laptop (now on their second batteries but working fine) and support right to repair, but may consider leasing such objects if there was transparency in knowing they would be effectively refurbished and/or recycled to a point where it actually made sense.
You could even make the point that the movies and shows that these services produce are becoming more perishable. When Netflix first came out with House of Cards it was talked about for months. Maybe it was just the quality of House of Cards but no new in recent years (besides GOT) has drawn this much attention. People seem to just watch the same shows over and over again until something new comes onto the service. The Irishman is the next test for this idea, but I don't see this movie being talked about till the end of the year even. We have so much on these services constantly coming out that the movies and T.V. don't have the same lifetime that they used too.
Hmm - True. This is also linked to amount of investment into content which has led to a large batches of TV shows, movies being released but homogenised because of the platform it serves.
Netflix is trying out different strategy with shows like GoodPlace to release content in a more timed manner maybe to increase longevity.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 38.9 ms ] threadFor example, toothpicks are perishable (or maybe more accurately consumable), but there are a lot of toothpick brands to choose from. Wouldn't it be nice if you could lock in a customer to recurring purchases of just your brand? Enter subscriptions. You see it happening all the time, everywhere.
On Amazon "subscribe and save" to any household perishable good. Microsoft replacing its corporate HUP program (which let you buy full office for $10) with a bogus replacement that just lets you get discounted subscriptions to 365. And of course, the most egregious offender, Adobe Creative Cloud.
Durable products, be they physical or software, are great for consumers but bad for companies. Hence, companies are moving away from them.
The unexplored dimension in this space (particularly in hardware) is whether a migration to a subscription model can improve material re-use (aka reverse logistics, cradle-to-cradle, etc.). For example, I’m afraid of giving up my years old durable phone/laptop (now on their second batteries but working fine) and support right to repair, but may consider leasing such objects if there was transparency in knowing they would be effectively refurbished and/or recycled to a point where it actually made sense.
Fairphone has supposedly been exploring a hybrid of this space as of last year: https://www.fairphone.com/en/2018/01/08/from-ownership-to-se...
Netflix is trying out different strategy with shows like GoodPlace to release content in a more timed manner maybe to increase longevity.