Subscription Economy for Servicizing a Work of Art: An OPEN GALLERY Case

Subscription economy refers to new trends of business models in which a consumer pays a recurring price on a regular basis for periodic use of a product or access to a service. Along the continuum of surprise, subscription models of consumer goods can be categorized into three archetypes: predefined, curated, and surprise subscriptions. Utilitarian and hedonic values and perceived risk are main constructs to investigate consumer behavior in curated subscription commerce. This paper introduces a business case of Open Gallery, a venture company for providing a curated subscription service of artistic paintings and explains its business in the perspective of a business model and consumer behavior. Open Gallery is making a success of servicizing a tangible artistic goods through creating the balanced utilitarian and hedonic values for subscribers, reducing his/her perceived risk by providing an individualized curation, and then achieving rapid growth based on the economics of network externality and customer lock-in.