Acquisition & Retention

Part III

Friends,

I hope that all is well with you and yours.

We have now started the book club virtual sessions and, as expected, the conversations have been highly interesting. If you want to join for our next book – Life After New Media by Sarah Kember and Joanna Zylinska – we will begin reading it this summer, in perfect time for an accompanying glass of rosé in the evening sun or, more likely, an embracing cup of tea by the window as the rain pours down outside. The book club is free for all subscribers, so come on in!

Oh, and speaking of books, I may have some exciting news to share in the near future. Although I cannot reveal anything yet, I will say that a hint may lie in the plural. Wink wink, nudge nudge.

Now onto the topic of the day.

As promised, we are going to conclude our customer acquisition and retention trilogy with a final look at some exceptions to the previously detailed rules, subscription markets and tech verticals. This is a paying subscriber exclusive.

Repertoires and subscriptions

As detailed over the last few weeks, empirical research (in particular by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute) has established that repeat purchase markets can be divided into those demarcated by repertoire buying and those which feature subscriptions. While the former has few solely loyal buyers (as defined by share of category requirements), the latter has many. The distinction between the two thus turns out to be of significantly greater strategic importance than whether the provided supply can be defined by any standard description, such as high vs low tech, product vs service, luxury vs commodity, niche vs mass, and so on.