Abstract
Recent years have seen a steady growth in the subscription box marketplace. While the pandemic spurred even greater growth in this space, the post-pandemic period has seen challenges for retailers like Birchbox, HelloFresh, Blue Apron, and Stitch Fix. Nevertheless, given the robust global market size of more than $28 billion for the category, furthering our understanding of the primary challenges for subscription box retailers--customer acquisition and retention--is particularly critical. Our study advances a fresh metaphor for understanding subscription boxes as consumption streams across the customer journey and extends the growing body of recent work on subscription boxes to Fennell's (1978) motivation classes. This metaphor advances both theoretical and practical understanding of the subscription box context.