{"id":8526,"date":"2017-05-04T12:03:43","date_gmt":"2017-05-04T10:03:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chartmogul.com\/blog\/?p=8526"},"modified":"2023-08-10T12:58:20","modified_gmt":"2023-08-10T10:58:20","slug":"subscribe-with-amazon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chartmogul.com\/blog\/subscribe-with-amazon\/","title":{"rendered":"Subscriptions rule our world; Amazon wants to rule our subscriptions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amazon is making waves in the business\u00a0of consumer subscriptions, and we should all take notice. The launch of Subscribe With Amazon<\/a> (SWA) is poised\u00a0to change the way consumers discover, onboard and manage subscription-based services — from mobile apps to video on demand (VOD) platforms, newspapers and magazines. But to understand why SWA is such a significant launch, we first need to understand the problems with consumer subscriptions.<\/p>\n

We actually covered\u00a0this topic in “How subscriptions conquered our world<\/a>” some months back. In summary, the promise of subscription services is that they give more control to consumers. Lower upfront commitment puts a focus on delivering ongoing customer value across the lifetime of their use of the product. The reality, however, is often different.<\/p>\n

With the\u00a0rapidly growing number of subscription products, certain aspects of the often-hyped “everything-as-a-service” lifestyle are becoming increasingly difficult:<\/p>\n

Discovery<\/b><\/h2>\n

Where do I find the best services to subscribe to? While the mobile app stores are optimised for app discovery and eCommerce does a great job of surfacing the best products to impulsively buy next, where do\u00a0I go to find the latest and greatest subscriptions? Currently, it’s likely to be word of mouth or some form of internet marketing. But I can’t compare products all in one place, or see reviews to understand which meditation app is most suited to my needs, for example.<\/p>\n

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Comparing and evaluating different subscription products often falls back to this.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Payments<\/b><\/h2>\n

Even with consumer billing products like PayPal, Apple Pay et al., payments are a pain for all involved. With no aggregated marketplace to buy subscriptions, I’m left entering my credit card details time after time on different websites and trusting them to handle my transaction securely. Additionally, as it’s subscription billing we’re talking about, we’re trusting these platforms to hold and continue to bill my card on an ongoing basis. Not to mention when my card expires, I have to go back to all these sites and update my card details! The problem here is clear, and painful.<\/p>\n

Management<\/b><\/h2>\n

As with payments, the problem of subscription management increases with the number of subscriptions in my life. How many times have you checked your bank statement, only to realise you’ve been passively paying for a service for several months that you weren’t even using? Proof of the reality of this problem exists in the form of several “subscription management” apps now on the market. Some of these apps connect to your bank account and scan for subscription payments for your to review, giving you a simplified list. But they can’t go any further than telling you what you’re currently subscribed to — and leaving it to you to figure out the job of dealing with them.<\/p>\n

As Annie wrote in How subscriptions conquered our world<\/i><\/a>, the increased control of a subscription lifestyle is at best, flawed, and quite possibly an illusion.<\/p>\n

Enter Amazon — probably one of the only businesses in a position to address all of these problems in one gut-punch of an announcement.<\/p>\n

Why Amazon is best-positioned to\u00a0save us from subscription hell<\/b><\/h1>\n

As you might guess, the problems listed above are not easily solved. Other startups have tried (and failed) to make any headway to date. So what were they missing?<\/p>\n

A healthy platform ecosystem: <\/b>Adding partners to such a platform, with the functionality to manage billing and product features requires deep integration with each partner. As I recently wrote in How to turn a product into a platform<\/i><\/a>, the sheer effort required to kick-start and nurture a healthy ecosystem with good support for developers is huge.<\/p>\n

A strong subscription offering of their own: <\/b>Amazon\u2019s \u201cRetail subscription services\u201d segment \u2014 dominated by Amazon Prime \u2014 grew to nearly $2B last quarter. Clearly the company understands the power of the recurring revenue model. Amazon Prime is one of the biggest consumer subscriptions on the market.<\/p>\n

Partnerships: <\/b>Whoever wants to succeeds with this solution needs the power and leverage to bring onboard enough of the services on the market to make the platform worthwhile. A subscription management platform with support for a tiny subset of the subscriptions I use is really no use to me.<\/p>\n

To become a vendor on such a platform means giving up a great deal of control, particularly for management features. This is a product which makes it far easier for customers to cancel<\/b> (churn). So in a world where many services require you to jump through a series of confusing dark patterns to even get to the cancel screen, how do you think that deal sounds to them?<\/p>\n

Amazon ticks all of the boxes here:<\/p>\n