While doing my weekly shopping, a task I rarely enjoy, I started looking at the endless rows and rows of products, their brands, brightly coloured images, fancy fonts, different size and shape packages all jostling from my attention and ultimately my wallet. As food shopping is one my least enjoyable activities, I decided to occupy my mind and stopping it going into “screen saver” mode by looking closely at the symbiotic relationship that underpins this ecosystem.
Like all successful symbiotic relationships, each party does something that benefits the other party, supermarkets provide the outlet display and sell the goods and a mean to collect the payments, food manufacturers provide the goods that supermarkets need to attract customers and …show more content…
The answer is surprisingly no, consumers and ultimately OTT providers are also losers… How? Let us start with the end user. As a frequent traveller who spends endless hours in airport lounges and long haul flights, I am always stocked up with content my smartphone and tablet to while away the endless hours. I have subscriptions to Sky Go, Amazon Prime, Netflix, BT Sports, Spotify and Apple Music. I use a direct debit from my bank account to pay my Mobile and the rest are spread over 4 credit cards simply because I do not trust them enough to give away my bank details. Now imagine the hassle I have to go through every time a credit card expires or is lost or stolen, I need to wait for the replacement card, remember which service is paid on which card, remember my login details for that service, login, enter the credit card details, set up a new payment agreement and hope and pray that it works. Imagine how easy my life would be if I just bought all of these services through a single provider using a single monthly debit, a single point of contact and a single interface to manage all of these accounts… This is not new concept, I use it every time I shop in a supermarket, I use a single shopping trolley, I fill it with multiple products from multiple manufacturers and I pay for the lot at a single till in a single transaction, I only need to get my payment card once, enter my PIN once and go home in time to get on with my life while the supermarket sorts out how much money each food manufacturer should
Like all successful symbiotic relationships, each party does something that benefits the other party, supermarkets provide the outlet display and sell the goods and a mean to collect the payments, food manufacturers provide the goods that supermarkets need to attract customers and …show more content…
The answer is surprisingly no, consumers and ultimately OTT providers are also losers… How? Let us start with the end user. As a frequent traveller who spends endless hours in airport lounges and long haul flights, I am always stocked up with content my smartphone and tablet to while away the endless hours. I have subscriptions to Sky Go, Amazon Prime, Netflix, BT Sports, Spotify and Apple Music. I use a direct debit from my bank account to pay my Mobile and the rest are spread over 4 credit cards simply because I do not trust them enough to give away my bank details. Now imagine the hassle I have to go through every time a credit card expires or is lost or stolen, I need to wait for the replacement card, remember which service is paid on which card, remember my login details for that service, login, enter the credit card details, set up a new payment agreement and hope and pray that it works. Imagine how easy my life would be if I just bought all of these services through a single provider using a single monthly debit, a single point of contact and a single interface to manage all of these accounts… This is not new concept, I use it every time I shop in a supermarket, I use a single shopping trolley, I fill it with multiple products from multiple manufacturers and I pay for the lot at a single till in a single transaction, I only need to get my payment card once, enter my PIN once and go home in time to get on with my life while the supermarket sorts out how much money each food manufacturer should