Every week, we bring you the top stories and analyses from the global Subscription Economy. 

Online Travel’s eDreams Apes Amazon With Prime Subscription Service
Excerpts from an article by Patrick Whyte in Skift.  

European online travel agency eDreams Odigeo, which operates brands such as Opodo and Go Voyages, has been quietly testing a new subscription model over the past two years or so under the name “Prime”. The very same title Amazon uses for its paid-for membership service.

Questions over the choice of name aside, it’s interesting to see an online travel agency experimenting with new ways to boost customer loyalty. eDreams’ big plan is to move from a transactional business — the same model used by other online travel agencies — to something different.

In the online marketplace where price is the defining factor in any transaction, loyalty is a very rare commodity. A subscription model would give it a deeper relationship with certain customers.

“Prime is our subscription offering, which is a revolutionary product in the online travel sector. It gives us the ability to move away from an entirely transactional client relationship. In fact, not only do we expand the relationship to cover the customer’s entire travel life cycle, Prime also allows us to engage the customer more throughout their full travel journey,” said CEO Dana Dunne on an earnings call following the release of the company’s full-year results on Tuesday.

Read the full article in Skift.

eMoney Advisor Announces Agenda for Annual Summit
Excerpts from an article in Yahoo Finance. 

eMoney Advisor (eMoney), a leading provider of technology solutions and services that help people talk about money, today announced the agenda for the 2019 eMoney Summit, the industry’s premier event for planning-led financial professionals. The 2019 eMoney Summit will be held at the Fairmont Austin in Austin, Texas on Oct. 14-16, 2019.

The three-day event will offer attendees an interactive environment to learn, collaborate and engage with renowned researchers in neuroscience and business leaders within the financial planning industry, including keynote presentations from:

• Tien Tzuo, founder and CEO of Zuora, who will share the ways your business can survive and thrive in the Subscription Economy by shifting your business model.
• Angela Duckworth, founder and CEO of Character Lab, who will discuss her influential work on true grit—the tendency to pursue long-term goals with perseverance and passion. She will describe the predictive power of grit for performance in a variety of fascinating contexts.
• Shawn Achor, New York Times Best Selling Author, who will share his research and formula, called The Happiness Advantage, to train your brain to be positive at work first to fuel greater success second.
• Dr. Brynn Winegard, an award-winning professor, speaker and business-brain expert, currently ranked #7 in the world for human behavior experts working in business, will discuss the art of neuroselling: how can you tap into the human subconscious to understand the ways people really process you and your influence during a conversation or sales pitch.

Read the full article in Yahoo Finance. 

Japan plans subscription model to promote primary care
Excerpts from an article by Juntaro Arai in Nikkei Asian Review.  

Japan is considering adopting a flat monthly fee system for visits with primary care doctors, seeking to rein in the overuse of big hospitals that has contributed to ballooning medical spending.

Patients would register with a particular provider and pay a fixed amount for regular services, similar to the direct primary care model emerging in the U.S. Consultations with other doctors, such as visits to hospitals or specialists, would cost extra.

The hope is that a monthly fee system would cut down on expensive hospital visits and excessive tests and prescriptions, while also giving patients an incentive to see primary care doctors more frequently, helping to prevent health problems and more quickly discover issues that do arise.

The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare will set prerequisites for clinics that can become primary care providers that patients can register with. Requirements may include partnerships with larger hospitals and ensuring patients can access care outside office hours.

For patients, seeing a primary care provider could prove cheaper than the current system, under which they must pay each time they seek medical care. Those who choose not to register would be charged as normal.

Read the full article in Nikkei Asian Review.   

How subscription ticketing is redefining MLB ticket sales
Excerpts from an article by John Lombardo in New York Business Journal. 

What began as an innovative pilot program in baseball in 2015 to help a handful of teams fill their ballparks has evolved into an industrywide practice that is redefining the season-ticket business.

Today, subscription ticketing — selling discounted seats for a fixed monthly fee — and its Netflix-like approach has proved so successful that more than two-thirds of MLB’s 30 teams have offered similar programs to drive attendance and to attract younger fans who prefer the mobile and flexible nature of the plans. Those teams sold more than a million tickets within the subscription-based model in 2018, up from 150,000 in 2016 during the first full year of the program. Through May 31, more than 765,000 tickets have been sold through subscription-based programs this season, up 36% year over year.

The subscription-based ticketing program works like this: Fans pay a fixed monthly fee for typically discounted general admission tickets or for a fixed number of games at a deep discount.

“It’s modeled like a gym membership with reserved seats serving like a personal training session,” said A’s Chief Operating Officer Chris Giles. “It is designed for a flexible experience.”

Read the full article in New York Business Journal. 

Scotch & Soda Announces Subscription Model for Men 
Excerpts from an article by Chloe Aiello in Cheddar. 

Dutch couture company Scotch & Soda is rolling out a subscription model ー just for men.

The company already does business with companies like Stitch Fix and Rent the Runway, but this will be the first time the company will operate its own subscription service. Hoffman said the company hopes to differentiate itself from competitors by focusing more on men, which make up about 60 percent of its customer base.

“For men, this would be the first ever. There isn’t today a men’s focused subscription model so we are the first ones, from what I know in the world, to launch it,” he added.

The company is still evaluating the fee structure and details, like how many items of clothing customers can have at one time. Eventually there will also be a service for women.

Beyond that, Scotch & Soda is continuing to expand its brick-and-mortar footprint, even as more consumers take their shopping online and e-commerce companies like Amazon steal more market share. Hoffman said he’s confident in Scotch & Soda’s ability to shift with the times and maintain it’s brick-and-mortar presence, because the company has always invested to ensure its shops are more experiential than the average retailer.

Read the full article in Cheddar. 

For more Subscription Economy resources and events, head to www.subscribed.com.