Subscribers’ Interest in Free Shipping Leaps 15 Percentage Points Since October

Among the shopping features consumers want their retail subscription providers to support, free shipping is ranked No. 1.

While this is a basic feature that consistently ranks at the top of subscribers’ must-have lists, it has grown in importance over the last few months, according to the “Subscription Commerce Conversion Index,” a PYMNTS and sticky.io collaboration based on a survey of 1,919 U.S. consumers.

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Eighty-two percent of respondents to the March survey said free shipping is a desired retail subscription feature, up 15 percentage points from the 67% who said the same in October.

Two other features were close behind in the rankings, and they also rose in importance by significant figures between October and March.

In the newer survey, 82% of subscribers said they want their subscription provider to accept the payment method they prefer, up from 69% in October, and 81% said want to be able to cancel the subscription immediately at no cost, up from 70% in October.

These three features were ranked among the three most important by consumers in all generations.

However, their expectations do vary with age, in the case of one of the generations.

The youngest consumers — those in Generation Z — ranked the three features in a different order. For these consumers, being able to cancel the subscription immediately at no cost is the most important feature (cited by 75% of Gen Z consumers), followed by being able to use the payment method they prefer (74%) and free shipping (72%).

Members of the four older generations — millennials, bridge millennials, Generation X and baby boomers and seniors — ranked those three features in the same order as the entire sample, with free shipping topping their lists.