On the economics of membership

Membership businesses are those that, through a subscription model, find ways of driving further engagement and therefore revenue from customers by giving them reasons to stay and use the product or service more, rather than putting up barriers to leaving.

Sam Jordan is keen to avoid the conflation of membership businesses with subscription businesses. The EVP, Media and Membership at Manifesto Growth Architects (MGA) admits that there are certain areas of overlap between the two, and is alive to comparisons with sharing economy businesses. Both contain elements of what he has fleshed out in a new report, How to make money in the Membership Economy.

As it happens, there’s great interest in subscription models, MGA finds. From the report: “we ran a quick survey and 70% of businesses said they thought “membership and subscription models were the future...

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