57% of Streaming-Only Customers Primarily Motivated by Price

Why do people turn to purely streamed sources for their video entertainment? For 56.9%, the answer is price.

That's one finding from "BroadbandNow 2019 U.S. Internet, TV & Phone Shopping Study," released today by ratings company BroadbandNow. Consumers who chose a combination of cable and streaming were far less motivated by price (38.9%).

"Streaming TV customers are more motivated by total cost of service than customers of traditional TV products," says John Busby, managing director of BroadbandNow. "In addition, because streaming TV isn’t tethered to a specific address, streaming TV purchasers were much less likely to list 'moving addresses' as the primary reason for purchase. A notable finding was that only 8% of streaming TV purchasers listed as their primary reason 'they did not already have the service.' This says to us that most customers in the market already have a streaming TV service."

The study finds satisfaction levels higher for streaming-only customers than those who have pay TV or a combination of pay TV and streaming. Those with cable reported the lowest satisfaction levels.

"Of the consumers who purchased or switched TV services in 2018, cord-cutters who used streaming TV exclusively were more satisfied than those who purchased traditional cable or satellite TV," Busby says. "Because so many of these purchase decisions were motivated by price, I believe this will challenge traditional providers to offer more flexibility to customers, such as providing smaller, bespoke content or channel offerings at a lower monthly price point."

BroadbandNow's findings comes from a combination of anonymized shopping and sales data, as well as online questionnaires, The company did not provide a margin of error for its findings.

For more shopping data, view the full study for free (no registration required).

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