Understanding consumer behaviour in evolving subscription markets – lessons from sports season tickets research

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose is to review literature on sports season ticket subscriptions to distil current knowledge and guide future research and practice.Design/methodology/approachA systematic literature review is conducted of research on sports season tickets, a long-established and innovative subscription category.FindingsIn-depth examination of 28 papers showed a focus on drivers of satisfaction, churn and renewal causes, and product utilisation rates. Subscription markets typically involve many “solely loyal” consumers, most purchasing one or two subscriptions in a category. From reduced barriers to entry and exit to “curated” subscriptions, subscription marketing is changing very quickly. Sports marketers build relationships with subscribers using behavioural data, tier benefits to distinguish between casual and subscribing customers, and create recall and scarcity around key aspects of subscription to combat churn and increase utilisation.Research limitations/implicationsScarce research on subscription marketing practices remains the primary limitation. Existing research suggests that strong connections between subscriber and organisation, heavy product utilisation and/or strong barriers to switching drive customer satisfaction and retention.Practical implicationsRapid expansion of subscription products should reduce “excess loyalty”, meaning that subscription models' main benefit will be limited to reoccurring revenue. Exceptions occur when consumers are heavily connected to the product or have little provider choice, so allocate their category buying exclusively. New subscription products face myriad challenges. Guidance on effective subscription marketing from sports marketing research and practice is outlined.Originality/valueBy combining research on market structure, marketing empirical generalisations and subscription marketing, this paper guides future research and practice.

The Impact of Short Video Live Broadcast on the Sales of Sports Machinery and Equipment

“…A large number of merchants and platforms have already participated in this process. The reason is that the low-cost and quick-acting publicity method can quickly fix users (McDonald et al, 2024). Different from traditional online sales platforms, with this new way, people can continuously shorten the distance between merchants and customers in the process of watching videos, potentially motivating customers to buy sports and fitness equipment from merchants, as they are more recognized for this sales method.…”

Uncovering the trends and developments in subscription business models through bibliometric analysis

“…Despite the rapid adoption of SBMs (Andonova et al, 2021;Bray et al, 2021;Erdogan et al, 2020;Fosker and Cheung, 2021), the theoretical understanding of this field remains limited. The dynamic and evolving definitions (Tuff and Wunker, 2014;Rappa, 2004;Schuh et al, 2019Schuh et al, , 2020Gassmann et al, 2014), along with challenges for adoption (McDonald et al, 2023;Schuh et al, 2019Schuh et al, , 2020Heller and Prasse, 2018;Fruchter and Sigu e, 2013;Singh and Crisafulli, 2016), call for a coherent future roadmap and research agenda, which is absent in the current literature, thereby creating a gap. The literature review shows that while there are studies on consumer sensitivity to price (Horng, 2012;Kang et al, 2014;Ganguli and Roy, 2010;Niemand et al, 2019;Xu and Duan, 2018) and value (Lah and Wood, 2016;Sinclair, 2017;Schuh et al, 2019;K€ ubler et al, 2021;Horng, 2012;Kang et al, 2014;Kammer et al, 2015;Mhalla et al, 2020;Ritter and Schanz, 2019;Larosa and Mysiak, 2020), it falls short of providing a comprehensive analysis of consumer behaviour and attitudes in SBMs.…”

“…Although SBMs have many benefits, including convenience, cost savings, and customisation (Erdogan et al, 2020;Schuh et al, 2019), they also face challenges, notably in terms of costs, increasing product usage, customer satisfaction and efforts related to customer retention and churn (McDonald et al, 2023). While businesses are rapidly trying to adopt SBMs, our theoretical understanding of this field remains limited.…”

“…, 2020; Schuh et al. , 2019), they also face challenges, notably in terms of costs, increasing product usage, customer satisfaction and efforts related to customer retention and churn (McDonald et al. , 2023).…”