General Motors and BMW have recently sparked controversy by announcing efforts to grow subscription-based products and services in future vehicles — which reportedly weren’t greeted well by consumers. However, the perceived outrage doesn’t match reality. Once consumers experience connected services, they are overwhelmingly satisfied and likely to resubscribe, according to a recent global consumer survey of nearly 8,000 consumers conducted by S&P Global Mobility.

“Consumers are welcoming to the idea of subscriptions, because it gives them exposure to features or technology that they may not have had in the past,” said Yanina Mills, senior technical research analyst at S&P Global Mobility.

In a subset of about 4,500 respondents who had experienced a free trial or an existing subscription on a model year 2016 vehicle or newer, 82% said they would definitely or probably consider purchasing subscription-based services on a future new vehicle purchase.

Key findings from the survey include”

• In-vehicle exposure is even better than education for growing demand and fostering satisfaction and retention with these services and brands. the study showed 45% of respondents had the service activated at the dealership, typically as part of a free trial period. That improves the odds of growing subscribers. “It’s all a matter of exposure,” Mills said.
• Once exposed, consumers are pretty happy with their connected services subscriptions. The vast majority of previous-subscriber respondents said they were likely to renew. Satisfaction is high as well, as 85% of respondents would recommend their service to a friend. Among individual brands, Audi Connect and BMW ConnectedDrive consistently perform well, scoring high in most global markets for the third survey year in a row.
• As seen in previous S&P Global Mobility consumer surveys, safety features prove very popular – although there are differences in appeal by region. For instance, at a country level, Brazil respondents have the lowest threshold for price points for paid updates in all subscription schemes, while Japan respondents reported the highest threshold for pricing they’d be willing to pay for the same updates, closely followed by the UK.
• Paid upgrade safety features, such as high-beam assist and driving-video recorder, earned the highest satisfaction – 89% — of all connected services. Likewise, navigation and safety/security features were the ones most desired in respondents’ next vehicles.
• Less expensive comfort features, such as heated seats and a heated steering wheel, prove less popular for subscriptions. Compared to more novel and higher-priced technology features, these less-expensive options have less perceived value when structured as a subscription – especially when they have long been available as standard on upper-trim models.

In addition, S&P Mobility found that Gen Z and Millennial respondents are most likely to drop connected-services subscriptions because of similar services on their smartphones.

To see more survey results, click here.