In this interesting post by Frederic Filloux ‘The Consumer Trends That Destroyed Media’s Business Model‘, some interesting trends are exposed about our consumption habits in the area of entertainment (thus, discretionary expenditure). Of course those expenditures only represent a small share of our total budgets, but they have great influence on our understanding of the world.
The curves and statistics show that most expenditures are taken by subscriptions to internet and mobile services, followed closely by a fast growing video-on-demand trend, led by Netflix. This leaves only limited space in the budgets for other expenditures such as events and tickets, literature, or press subscriptions. This translates to more and more time spent on those services to the detriment of written books or media, or even live shows or visiting museums.
At the same time that there is an increasing development of somewhat addictive series instead of feature films, this trend is at the same time not too surprising but also concerning.
It definitely shows a substantial shift as many of those expenditures did not exist 20 years ago, therefore, they have necessarily replaced other activities and expenditures and those (including cable TV, the press, cinemas or generally live shows) are thus suffering. The trends give all of us much more choices in what we are watching while giving us potentially less opportunity to discover new things.
Anyway, it is quite illuminating to observe how our expenditure habits have dramatically changed in the last years, giving us more opportunity to choose our entertainment, with a large domination of online and video entertainment. This is certainly a trend that will continue.
