Purpose

The purpose is to review literature on sports season ticket subscriptions to distil current knowledge and guide future research and practice.

Design/methodology/approach

A systematic literature review is conducted of research on sports season tickets, a long-established and innovative subscription category.

Findings

In-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/implications

Scarce 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 implications

Rapid 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/value

By combining research on market structure, marketing empirical generalisations and subscription marketing, this paper guides future research and practice.

中文翻译：

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了解不断变化的订阅市场中的消费者行为——体育季票研究的教训

目的

目的是回顾有关体育季票订阅的文献，以提炼当前的知识并指导未来的研究和实践。

设计/方法论/途径

对体育季票这一历史悠久且创新的订阅类别的研究进行了系统的文献综述。

发现

对 28 篇论文的深入研究表明，重点关注满意度驱动因素、流失和更新原因以及产品利用率。订阅市场通常涉及许多“完全忠诚”的消费者，大多数人购买一个类别中的一两个订阅。从减少进入和退出壁垒到“策划”订阅，订阅营销正在迅速变化。体育营销人员使用行为数据与订阅者建立关系，通过分级福利来区分临时客户和订阅客户，并围绕订阅的关键方面创建召回和稀缺性，以打击客户流失并提高利用率。

研究局限性/影响

对订阅营销实践的研究很少仍然是主要的限制。现有研究表明，订户和组织之间的紧密联系、产品的大量使用和/或转换的强大障碍可以提高客户满意度和保留率。

实际影响

订阅产品的快速扩张应该会减少“过度忠诚度”，这意味着订阅模式的主要好处将仅限于经常性收入。当消费者与产品联系紧密或几乎没有供应商选择时，就会出现例外情况，因此专门分配他们的类别购买。新的订阅产品面临着无数的挑战。概述了体育营销研究和实践中有效订阅营销的指南。

原创性/价值

本文通过结合市场结构、营销实证概括和订阅营销的研究，指导未来的研究和实践。