From Netflix to Refrigerators – What We Are Really Paying For
Subscribe-to-Own – Exploring Access, Flexibility, and Ownership in the Modern Economy
A refrigerator sitting unplugged in a warehouse has value, but not the kind that matters very much to the family whose refrigerator stopped working this morning. Its useful value appears when it is in the kitchen keeping milk cold, leftovers safe, and groceries from spoiling. The same is true of a washing machine, laptop, mattress, or television. We buy products because of what they allow us to do.
That seems obvious, yet consumer decisions are often evaluated as though acquiring title were the primary source of value. We ask what something costs to own, whether the consumer eventually owns it, and how much less ownership might have cost through another path. Those are legitimate questions, but they begin at the end of the transaction rather than with the reason the product was needed in the first place.
The subscription economy has made this distinction easier to see. Netflix did not convince millions of people that movies had become worthless. It showed that consumers could value watching a movie without needing to own a copy of it. That same separation between the product and the function it provides becomes more interesting when we move from digital entertainment to the physical things we use every day.
We Usually Want What the Product Does
Economists and marketing scholars have wrestled with this question for a long time. One influential line of research argues that value does not simply sit inside a product waiting to be transferred at the cash register. Stephen Vargo and Robert Lusch challenged the traditional goods-centered view of exchange by emphasizing service and the value consumers realize through use. Their work helped shift attention from the object itself toward what happens when people put resources to work in their lives.
That idea becomes concrete very quickly. Few people wake up wanting legal title to a refrigeration appliance. They want food to stay cold. Parents buying a washing machine are trying to solve a clean-clothes problem. A student with a dead laptop is concerned about tomorrow's assignment, not the metaphysics of personal property.
Ownership is often an excellent way to obtain those outcomes, particularly when a product will be used for a long time. The mistake is treating ownership as though it were the outcome itself. In most cases, ownership is a means of securing continued access to whatever capability made the product desirable in the first place.
The Subscription Economy Changed the Mental Model
Access-based consumption research gives us another way to understand the shift. Fleura Bardhi and Giana Eckhardt examined transactions in which consumers obtain use without taking ownership and showed that access can function as a distinct mode of consumption rather than merely an incomplete form of purchasing. Their work focused on car sharing, but the broader distinction between access and ownership has become increasingly visible across the economy.
Digital subscriptions provided the easiest classroom. We stopped asking whether we owned the movie, music file, or software package and started asking whether the service gave us what we wanted at a price we were willing to pay. The transaction became easier to evaluate around function: entertainment, storage, communication, productivity, or convenience.
Physical goods make the question more complicated because a tangible product has residual value and can eventually become property. That does not erase the importance of use while the consumer has it. A sofa provides seating during every month it is in the living room. A refrigerator creates value every day it keeps food cold. A mattress provides its primary benefit each night, long before anyone asks who holds title.
The useful question, then, is not simply whether access or ownership is better. It is what combination of access, duration, flexibility, service and ownership best fits the consumer's actual circumstances.
Physical Products Add Service to the Equation
The digital subscription analogy also has limits. Netflix never has to carry your television up three flights of stairs, repair your washing machine, or replace a refrigerator that stops cooling. Physical goods bring logistics and service into the value equation.
That matters because the price of a durable product is only one part of the household experience. Delivery has value. Setup has value. Repair capability has value. Replacement support has value. So does having someone responsible for helping restore the function of a product when it stops working.
This is one reason purely price-based comparisons can become incomplete. A consumer may rationally pay more for a transaction that transfers some combination of service burden, product risk, and logistical responsibility to someone else. We recognize this principle readily in other markets. People pay premiums for warranties, managed services, maintenance agreements, and roadside assistance because transferring responsibility has value.
The same idea appears in my broader Philosophy of Access framework. Ownership can create benefits, but it also transfers obligations. Maintenance, repair, disposal, depreciation, and the difficulty of changing course all become part of the owner's problem. Whether those burdens are worth assuming depends heavily on how long the product will be needed and how certain the consumer is about the future.
Rent-to-Own Makes the Tradeoff Visible
Rent-to-own offers an unusually clear example because it combines access, service, and potential ownership in one relationship.
The Federal Trade Commission's national survey found that customers used RTO across precisely the kinds of products where function matters every day. Home electronics accounted for 38 percent of rented merchandise, furniture for 36 percent and appliances for 25 percent. The most common individual products included televisions, sofas, and washing machines.
Most of the merchandise in that study was eventually purchased. Seventy percent of rented items resulted in ownership, and 87 percent of customers who began intending to purchase ultimately did so. At the same time, the return data is equally interesting: 59 percent of returned merchandise was returned because the customer's need for the product had changed.
Those findings resist a simple story in either direction. Ownership plainly matters to many RTO customers. So does the ability to stop when the need changes. The transaction accommodates both behaviors.
That is why Subscribe-to-Own is a useful description. The customer receives the function of the product immediately, continues the relationship through recurring rental periods, may receive applicable service during that period, and retains a pathway to ownership. If circumstances change before ownership makes sense, the traditional RTO structure also provides a way to return the merchandise and end future rental payments according to the agreement.
The ownership option remains important without requiring us to pretend that nothing of value happened before ownership occurred.
Value Does Not Wait for Title
This becomes especially clear when we imagine a household dealing with an ordinary emergency. A refrigerator fails on Thursday. Replacing it immediately prevents food loss and restores a basic household function. Whether the family ultimately owns that particular refrigerator eighteen months later matters, but it does not erase the value received on Friday, Saturday, and every day after the replacement arrived.
The same logic applies to a laptop needed for work, a washer needed by a family with children, or furniture needed after an unexpected move. Time matters. Function matters. Service matters. The ability to change course can matter as well.
None of this makes price irrelevant, and it certainly does not make ownership unimportant. A consumer planning to use the same appliance for fifteen years should care deeply about long-term acquisition cost and the advantages of ownership. A consumer facing a six-month housing transition may reasonably evaluate the decision differently.
The mistake comes when we assume that one measure of value must govern both decisions.
What Are We Really Paying For?
The answer depends on the transaction.
Sometimes we are paying to acquire an asset. Sometimes we are paying for temporary access. Often we are paying for a combination of function, convenience, time, service, risk transfer, and future options. Modern consumer markets increasingly bundle those elements together in different proportions.
The subscription economy helped make access understandable because consumers could see that useful outcomes did not require permanent ownership. Physical goods add another dimension because they can provide value during access and still become owned later.
Rent-to-own sits in that intersection. The customer can receive the useful function of a product now while retaining a choice about ownership later. Seen from that perspective, Subscribe-to-Own is less a new invention than a modern description of a transaction that has been separating use from ownership for decades.
Key Takeaways
Consumers generally seek the function a product provides, while ownership is one way of securing continued access to that function.
Research on service and access-based consumption supports evaluating value through use as well as possession and title.
Physical products add service, repair, delivery, and other responsibilities that can affect the value of a transaction.
FTC data on rent-to-own shows both substantial ownership outcomes and meaningful use of return flexibility when consumer needs changed.
Subscribe-to-Own combines current use with a possible later ownership outcome rather than treating the two as mutually exclusive.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does “value in use” mean?
Value in use refers to the benefit a consumer receives from actually using a product or service. A refrigerator, for example, creates practical value by keeping food cold regardless of whether the user currently owns the appliance.
Does valuing access mean ownership is unimportant?
No. Ownership can provide substantial long-term economic value and control. The point is that consumers may also receive value through access before ownership occurs, and different circumstances can change the relative importance of each.
Why is service part of the value of a physical product?
Durable physical goods can require delivery, setup, maintenance, and repair. When a transaction includes some of those responsibilities, consumers are receiving more than possession of the underlying item.
How does Subscribe-to-Own fit this idea?
Subscribe-to-Own is APRO's consumer education term for rent-to-own as a renewable lease for physical goods that provides recurring access and an option to acquire ownership. It combines value during use with the possibility of later ownership.
Related Reading
Ownership as Burden examines the responsibilities and risks that accompany ownership.
The Philosophy of Access develops the broader framework for evaluating access, capability, flexibility, and ownership.
The APRO Rent-to-Own 101 Knowledge Base provides the legal and transactional explanation of Subscribe-to-Own and rental-purchase agreements.
Footnotes
Vargo, Stephen L., and Robert F. Lusch. “Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing.” Journal of Marketing, vol. 68, no. 1, 2004, pp. 1–17. The article develops a service-centered account of economic exchange that shifts attention away from value embedded solely in goods and toward value realized through service and use.
Bardhi, Fleura, and Giana M. Eckhardt. “Access-Based Consumption: The Case of Car Sharing.” Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 39, no. 4, 2012, pp. 881–898. Peer-reviewed research examining access as a form of consumption distinct from ownership.
Federal Trade Commission. Survey of Rent-to-Own Customers. April 2000. The FTC's nationwide survey provides data on the merchandise consumers rented, purchase outcomes, returns, and reasons customers chose to return products.
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