Latest / The Pricing Marketing Podcast with Fexingo: Price Anchoring, Bundling, and Conversion Pricing / How Subscription Fatigue Creates Pricing Opportunity
Transcript
- Lucas: We've spent the last couple of episodes talking about anchoring — the price that sets the mental benchmark for everything else. But there's a quieter shift happening in the background that I think is actually reshaping which anchor even works. Luna: What do you mean by 'quieter shift'? Lucas: I mean subscription fatigue. It's not a new term — we've been hearing it since about 2020. But the data from early 2026 is starting to show that consumers aren't just annoyed by subscriptions anymore; they're actively restructuring their spending to avoid them. And that's creating a real pricing opportunity on the flip side. Luna: Interesting. So the fatigue itself becomes an anchor — like, people now have a baseline aversion to autopay. Lucas: Exactly. And if you're a brand that's been relying on subscription revenue, that's a problem. But if you're smart about it, you can actually turn the fatigue into a pricing differentiator. Take the meal-kit space — a pretty saturated market. One of the big players — I won't name them because their numbers are private, but think the size of a HelloFresh — quietly rolled out a 'flexible credit' system earlier this year. Luna: Right, because the traditional meal-kit model is a weekly subscription with no rollover. You miss a week, you lose that money. Lucas: Exactly. So what they did: instead of a fixed weekly charge, they moved to a 'credit wallet.' Customers buy a block of ten credits upfront — each credit equals one meal kit for two people. Credits roll over month to month, and they never expire as long as you use at least one every three months. The price per credit is actually slightly higher than the old per-box price — about eight percent more. Luna: Wait, so they charge more per meal, and people are okay with it? Lucas: They're more than okay — their cancellation rate dropped by twenty-two percent in the first four months. The psychological shift is subtle but powerful: you're not paying for access, you're paying for a store of value. The old subscription felt like a leaky pipe — money leaving your account every week. The credits feel like an asset you own. Even though you're paying more per unit, the sense of control is worth it to people. Luna: That's a great real-world example. And if today was actually useful to you, the way these episodes stay ad-free is listener support — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Keeps the conversation going without any sponsor interruptions. Lucas: Exactly. It's a small gesture that makes a big difference for us. So back to the meal-kit case — what's interesting is that this isn't just about subscriptions. It's about ownership versus access. The subscription model is pure access: you pay for the right to receive goods. The credit model is quasi-ownership: you've bought something, even if it's digital tokens. And that shift in mental accounting changes how people value the product. Luna: It reminds me of what Adobe went through when they moved to the Creative Cloud subscription. Initially, they saw a big jump in users because the entry price dropped from hundreds of dollars to fifty a month. But now, years later, there's growing frustration among professional users who feel locked in. I've talked to designers who say they'd pay a premium for a perpetual license, even if it's more expensive upfront. Lucas: Right, and Adobe's data actually shows that churn among enterprise users — teams of five or more — has crept up to about nine percent annually, which is high for that segment. They've started offering a 'term license' option in some verticals, but it's still a subscription underneath. The pricing opportunity I'm seeing is for brands that can offer a genuine alternative: not just a different price, but a different relationship to the product. Luna: So are you saying the unbundling trend — moving away from all-you-can-eat subscriptions — is the new growth lever? Lucas: In part. But it's more nuanced than just 'subscriptions bad, one-time purchase good.' The data from a 2025 McKinsey survey showed that sixty-three percent of consumers still prefer subscriptions for categories they use consistently — like streaming video or cloud storage. The fatigue kicks in when the subscription feels disconnected from usage. You're paying for Netflix even when you're not watching. You're paying for Peloton even when you're traveling. Luna: And Peloton actually addressed that — they introduced a 'class pass' style option last year where you buy a pack of ten live classes that don't expire. It's not their main offering, but it's growing faster than their monthly subscription now. Lucas: That's exactly the kind of hybrid model I'm talking about. The key is that the anchor price shifts from 'per month' to 'per use' or 'per credit.' And that actually allows you to charge a higher per-unit price because the consumer feels less risk. They're not committing to an ongoing expense. They're buying a single decision. Luna: But doesn't that hurt your predictable recurring revenue? I mean, Wall Street loves subscriptions because they smooth out earnings. Lucas: It does introduce more volatility, no question. But the trade-off is lower churn and potentially higher lifetime value. The meal-kit company I mentioned saw their average revenue per user actually go up by four percent because people who bought credits ended up using more of them than they would have under a fixed subscription. The flexibility encouraged more frequent usage, not less. Luna: So it's a behavioral unlock: remove the penalty for skipping, and people engage more. Lucas: Exactly. There's a concept in behavioral pricing called the 'endowment effect' — once you own something, you value it more. By converting the subscription into a wallet of credits, you're making the customer feel like they own a resource, not just a service. And they want to use that resource so it doesn't go to waste. It's the same psychology behind prepaid gift cards. Luna: So what's the pricing opportunity for a brand that's currently all-subscription? Where do they start? Lucas: Start with your most cancellable segment. Look at your churn data: who's leaving after three months? That's your target for a credit-based experiment. You don't have to overhaul your entire pricing. Just offer a 'pay as you go' tier alongside the subscription. The anchor you want to set is: 'pay less upfront, no commitment, but slightly more per unit.' For the customer, the psychological savings from not being locked in outweigh the actual extra cost. Luna: We've seen this work in software too. I remember when Notion introduced a 'pay per seat' option alongside their team plan. Before, you paid a flat monthly rate for up to ten seats. Now you can pay per active user, which is more expensive per person but feels more fair. Their enterprise adoption increased. Lucas: Right, and that's a different angle on the same principle: usage-based pricing is a form of unbundling. The subscription fatigue is real — I saw a report from a consumer advocacy group that said the average household now has nine active subscriptions, and they're actively trying to cut three of them this year. That's a huge headwind. But if you can reposition your product as something they buy, not something they're billed for, you bypass that mental filter. Luna: It's almost like going back to the old model but with modern packaging. You buy a product — whether it's a credit pack or a class pass — and you own it. The subscription is just the delivery mechanism. Lucas: Exactly. And the smartest companies are using that insight to set a new anchor. Instead of anchoring on 'only $9.99 a month,' they're anchoring on '$10 per class' or '$50 for a 10-pack.' That per-unit price can be higher than the subscription equivalent, but the consumer is comparing it to the alternative — which is a full commitment. And in that comparison, the per-unit price often wins. Luna: So who's doing this really well right now? Lucas: I think the streaming services are starting to pivot. Disney+ launched a 'day pass' in some international markets — pay a few dollars for 24 hours of access. It's not their main business, but it captures the tourist or the occasional viewer. And the pricing is interesting: the day pass is priced at about 30 percent of a monthly subscription. So if someone uses it three times a month, they'd actually pay more than the monthly fee. But it's a cheaper decision to make — the anchor is 'do I want to spend $3.99 right now?' not 'do I want to commit to another $11.99 monthly charge?' Luna: That's clever because it also works as a price discrimination tool: heavy users still subscribe, light users pay more per viewing, and the company captures both segments. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the real opportunity here — using subscription fatigue as a segmentation tool. Consumers who are fatigued are not a monolith. Some just want control, some want lower commitment, some want to feel like they're not being taken advantage of. Each of those groups might respond to a different unbundling strategy. The pricing opportunity is in matching the right model to the right mindset. Luna: I'd love to see more data on how credit-based models affect long-term retention. The meal-kit data is promising, but it's only four months. Lucas: Agreed. The jury's still out on whether the effect persists after a year. But early signals are strong enough that I think we'll see a lot more experimentation in the next year. If you're a pricing manager listening, this is the moment to test a flexible tier before everyone else does. Luna: And maybe the biggest takeaway is that the anchor isn't always the price itself — sometimes it's the relationship you're selling. Lucas: Well put. The subscription fatigue anchor is a psychological one: 'I don't want another monthly bill.' If you can reframe your offer so it doesn't look like a bill, you've already won half the battle.