Research tells us that one of the things that makes decision-making more difficult is having too many choices. While we may think that having many choices is a good thing, fear of making the wrong choice - called loss aversion - is amplified when we have more choices.
One way to deal with too many choices is to make smart ones and repeat. When in office President Obama always wore a blue or black suit. That's easy. Our brains like binary choices.
But what about letting someone else decide?
That's where subscription services come in. Suddenly they are everywhere.
Birchbox offers a monthly package of five samples from a variety of beauty categories like skin care and hair products. But, if you are more interested in makeup than skin care products then Ipsy might be for you.
SnackCrate will send you a box of food-like-objects that you really shouldn't eat curated from around the world. They say they "deliver happiness."
But if healthy food is what you want you can check out - Health Surprise for $42.49 a month and Butcherboy for $149 a month. Bokksu will even ship you sushi direct from Japan for $39.99 a month. Such a bargain.
If choosing what to wear gets you down - there's always Stitchfix. They don't require a subscription anymore, but they do encourage automatic deliveries in time frames ranging from two weeks to three months.
Is it any wonder then that many people are oversubscribed? Or that they don't realize how much money they are spending on monthly subscriptions?
In a 2019 survey of 2,500 consumers done by the Waterstone Group, people guessed that they were spending $79.74 a month, when in fact they were spending $237.33 a month. (Freedman, 2019)
That's a lot of money.
So now a bunch of companies that help people cancel their monthly
subscriptions, like Truebill, have emerged.
Why do people buy subscription boxes? Are there different motivations for different types of products? Different types of people? Why do people need help canceling subscriptions?
Do you subscribe to any monthly boxes? Which ones and why? Are you considering canceling?
Freedman, D. (2019, July 24) How Much Do Subscriptions Cost You? Probably More (and Maybe a LOT More) Than You Think. thesimpledollar.com. Retrieved March 16, 2021, from https://www.thesimpledollar.com/save-money/how-much-are-subscriptions-costing-you-probably-more-and-maybe-a-lot-more-than-you-think/
