Market Overview

The subscription service market (total 7 categories, targeting rental services not including regular home delivery services) calculated based on the payment by end users (consumers) for 2023 is projected to rise by 5.2% to 943,000 million yen.

The subscription service market has expanded from mid 2010s, led by digital contents industry. In recent years, those industries that provide life-essential categories such as clothing, food, and residence have been providing the service continuously, which brought about the advent of platformers. Against this backdrop, many categories are in growing phases, boosting the subscription market.

Noteworthy Topics

Trends of Home Appliance Segment amongst Lifestyle Category

COVID-19 crisis triggered rapid expansion of home-appliance subscription services. The home appliance category in the subscription market is brisk, with increasing number of services.

Before COVID crisis, subscription services for home appliances and furniture were thought as difficult to spread, as these items were regarded as hardly the target for consumers to borrow for use. Worse, not many home appliance manufacturers have entered the market then, which made the service to be little attractive, with limited brands and products to choose from, which prevented from growing.

During the pandemic when people avoided from going outside and buying at shops, use of ecommerce has expanded. However, consumers tended to purchase home appliances and furniture only after they actually saw the products at stores, which kept a certain number of consumers from buying them through ecommerce. In such a situation, the subscription service for furniture and home appliances gathered attention and increased users, as the service allowed users to use a product on trial for a certain period and let them use continuously if they liked it. This fueled many home appliance manufacturers to enter subscription service business.

Until before COVID, the subscription services were used as ethical consumption, where users were conscious of sharing rather than possessing. Currently, however, a growing number of subscription services of home appliances let users to have the ownership of the product after trial use for a certain period. Therefore, users are more pragmatic, as those users buy the products in the end are increasing. There even a new way of thinking about or experiencing subscription services, where users use the service for installment acquisition of a product they liked as an extension of trial period.

Future Outlook

During corona crisis when people were not able to go outside freely, ecommerce widespread. This fueled subscription services that could be used indoors to increase. Favorable sales were observed for subscription services for home appliances and furniture/interior belonging to the lifestyle related category, and for video streaming in the digital contents category.

Now that COVID-19 crisis is over, the opportunity for outdoor activities increases and the categories of fashion, food services/takeaway of food & beverages, leisure & entertainment expect growth. As the commodity price rise affects various product and services, the objectives to use subscription services may change, which may increase or decrease the use by category. Still, the entire subscription service market is the growth market, steadfastness is projected for overall market.

Research Outline