Subscription graveyard: How many unused subscriptions are consumers currently paying for?
In the age of convenience, there’s hardly a business that hasn’t tried to engage - or retain - customers with subscriptions. But how many of these subscriptions lie unused?
We asked shoppers across 17 international markets how many active subscriptions they have not used in the past six months. Before we get to that, data from YouGov Surveys: Serviced reveals that more than one in five consumers (22%) say they are currently not subscribed to any services.
But among those who have subscribed to services, close to two in five (38%) have used all of their subscriptions in the past six months. But more than half are paying for subscriptions that they don’t use. Around one in five (17%) haven’t used one of their current subscriptions in the same period while 15% haven’t used two of their current subscriptions. A further 11% are sitting on three unused subs.
Data also reveals that 3% of consumers haven’t used more than five of their current subscriptions in the past six months.
Moving on to data from individual markets surveyed, we see that among those who are currently subscribed to services, Brits are the most likely across markets to say they’ve used all their current subscriptions in the past six months (56%).
Consumers in the Nordic markets surveyed (Danes, 49% and Swedes, 45%), and America (45%) follow those in Great Britain.
Notably, Brits are most likely to factor in price when choosing subscription services and two in five are likely to cancel their streaming subscriptions because “they don’t use it enough”.
Also read: 33% of US car owners interested in trying car subscription model
In Asia, a third of Hong Kongers (33%) have no services left unused in the last six months - the most likely in this region to say so.
Indonesians are the most likely (25%) to say they haven’t used one of their current subscriptions in the past six months, while Mexicans (23%) and Indians (23%) are the most likely to have two un used subscriptions.
Consumers in the UAE account for the largest proportion (18%) of those across markets to have left three of their ongoing subscriptions unused in the last six months and nearly one in ten Indians (9%) have four of their services left unused in recent months.
Indians lead (7%) in saying they haven’t used more than five of their current subscriptions while 14% of Indonesians (most likely to say so, across markets) don’t know how many of their services have or haven’t been used in the last six months, closely followed by Italians (13%).
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Methodology: YouGov Surveys: Serviced provide quick survey results from nationally representative or targeted audiences in multiple markets. The data is based on surveys of adults aged 18+ years in 17 markets with sample sizes varying between 376 and 1529 for each market. All surveys were conducted online in February 2024. Data from each market uses a nationally representative sample apart from Mexico and India, which use urban representative samples, and Indonesia and Hong Kong, which use online representative samples. Learn more about YouGov Surveys: Serviced.