Pricing · Quasi-experiment using propensity-score matching and difference-in-differences, supplemented by a lab experiment on perceived lock-in.
The effect of subscriptions on customer engagement
Journal of Business Research · 2024
Summary
After accounting for self-selection, subscriptions produced large, persistent increases in content consumption and content generation (lasting at least a month); the effect was stronger for less-engaged users. Subscription increased perceived lock-in, which increased engagement intention.
For your marketing
Possible founder application
Use this as a pricing or packaging hypothesis and define outcomes to measure; estimate effects with your own customer mix and willingness-to-pay evidence.
Reported result
What the study found
After accounting for self-selection, subscriptions produced large, persistent increases in content consumption and content generation (lasting at least a month); the effect was stronger for less-engaged users. Subscription increased perceived lock-in, which increased engagement intention.
Research question
What the authors investigated
How does joining an online-community subscription affect users’ content consumption and content generation, and does perceived lock-in explain heterogeneous effects by prior engagement?
Design
Quasi-experiment using propensity-score matching and difference-in-differences, supplemented by a lab experiment on perceived lock-in.
Sample and setting
Users of a leading mobile music community; the observational data span two months and compare subscribers with non-subscribers. The publisher page also reports a lab experiment.
Scope and transfer
Limitations to keep in view
Not stated on the publisher article-preview page fetched in this run.
Research sources
The publisher abstract says subscriptions increase both content consumption and generation through perceived lock-in, with a stronger positive effect for less-engaged users. The article preview describes a two-month mobile-music-community dataset, propensity-score matching, DID, and a lab experiment. Direct publisher-page retrieval was recorded on 2026-10-09; profile summarizes the accessible record and does not claim independent review of inaccessible full text.