Predictive Analytics and Ship-Then-Shop Subscription

This paper studies an emerging subscription model called ship-then-shop. Leveraging its predictive analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) capability, the ship-then-shop firm curates and ships a product to the consumer, after which the consumer shops (i.e., evaluates product fit and makes a purchase decision). The consumer first pays the up-front ship-then-shop subscription fee prior to observing product fit and then pays the product price afterward if the consumer decides to purchase. We investigate how the firm balances the subscription fee and product price to maximize its profit when consumers can showroom. A key finding is the ship-then-shop firm’s nonmonotonic surplus extraction strategy with respect to its prediction capability. As prediction capability increases, the firm first switches from ex ante to ex post surplus extraction (by lowering fees and raising prices). However, if the prediction capability increases further, the firm reverts to ex ante surplus extraction (by raising fees and capping prices). We also find that the ship-then-shop model is most profitable when (i) the prediction capability is advanced, (ii) the search friction in the market is large, or (iii) the product match potential is large. Finally, we show that the marginal return of AI capability on the firm’s profit decreases in search friction but increases in product match potential. Taken together, we provide managerially relevant insights to help guide the implementation of the innovative subscription model. This paper was accepted by Dmitri Kuksov, marketing. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4723 .