Riding the subscription box wave: Understanding the landscape, challenges, and critical success factors of the subscription box industry

Understanding Customer Participation Dynamics: The Case of the Subscription Box

“…This occurs when the company does the work, instead of the customer (Dong et al 2015), which detracts from the enjoyment of the moment of surprise when the box would have arrived with unfamiliar, but personally curated, products. Research shows that customers enjoy the sense of novelty associated with curated box services and the anticipation of being surprised by the box's contents (Andonova, Anaza, and Bennett 2021; Van Pelt 2018). Indeed, 55% of box subscribers choose surprise-based curation boxes rather than preselected ones (Anderson 2020).…”

“…Companies curate boxes of products, including apparel, meal kits, tech gadgets, personal care, and toys, and deliver them to customers’ doorsteps at regular intervals. For product companies, this is their opportunity to gain the type of recurring revenue enjoyed by service companies (Andonova, Anaza, and Bennett 2021). Further, they gain rich data from digital interactions with customers that they can use to improve their personalized offerings.…”

“…The customer journey consists of prepurchase, purchase, and postpurchase stages (Lemon and Verhoef 2016), which map onto the upcoming, delivered, and skipped box stages of the box process, respectively. Although involving customers in the upcoming box by having them preview its contents (and make changes if needed) may increase the odds of the success of that box, it has the potential to ruin the “surprise” element coveted by customers (Andonova, Anaza, and Bennett 2021; Van Pelt 2018), which may affect future purchases. Customer participation with the delivered box and its tangible products can be considered an engaging activity relative to participating with a skipped box and its hypothetical products (i.e., the customer’s providing feedback about why they are skipping).…”

Examining the Business Model of Replenishment Subscriptions: a Longitudinal Case Study

“…Only a few studies have looked in isolation at the subscription box business model (see e.g., Warrillow, 2015;Rudolph et al, 2017;Andonova et al, 2021). Nonetheless, the literature on subscription boxes still lacks support from a strong theoretical framework that enables analysis of the business model as a whole and serves as the basis for ensuring the model's viability, which represents a common gap in e-commerce literature (Rodríguez-García et al, 2016).…”

“…Rudolph et al, (2017) analyzed the value proposition, revenue streams and KPIs of the distinct subscription box types, including replenishment boxes. Finally, Andonova et al (2021) provided a detailed description of the subscription box industry and proposed a framework for analyzing the offering from such firms that included consumer segmentation, the benefits offered to consumers, product categories, and the competition. Referring to the value, Baxter (2016) stated that for any subscription model to be successful it must offer something extra that sporadic buying of the product does not offer, and not just provide repeat revenues for the firm.…”