Consumer Behavior and Adoption of Over-the-Top Streaming Services

Consumer behaviour and adoption of over-the-top (OTT) streaming services have evolved through a nexus of technological innovation, shifting audience expectations and competitive market forces. Ubiquitous high-speed internet and smart devices have liberated audiences from fixed broadcasting schedules, fostering on-demand access to vast content libraries. Adoption drivers encompass perceived ease of use, personalisation, emotional and informational gratifications, and social influence, often framed within extended technology acceptance and uses and gratifications paradigms. Viewing patterns such as binge-watching underscore a shift toward immersive, ritualised media consumption that strengthens platform loyalty but may also heighten concerns around screen time. Providers compete through exclusive “killer” content, dynamic pricing models, bundling and tailored recommendation engines to attract and retain subscribers. Segmentation analyses reveal distinct user clusters based on frequency of use, content preferences and demographic traits, enabling the targeting of profitable niches. Globally, adoption rates diverge according to broadband infrastructure, cultural tastes and local content production, with implications for both industry strategy and public media policy. Insights from this field inform platform design, customer engagement initiatives and regulatory approaches in an increasingly convergent media ecosystem.

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Consumer Behavior and Adoption of Over-the-Top Streaming Services publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in consumer behavior and adoption of over-the-top streaming services across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Over-the-top (OTT) streaming: Delivery of audio and video content via the internet without reliance on traditional broadcast or cable operators.

Uses and gratifications theory: A framework analysing how individuals select media to satisfy specific psychological and social needs.

Subscription intention: A consumer’s stated likelihood of initiating a paid subscription to a streaming service.

Continuation intention: A consumer’s propensity to maintain or renew an existing subscription to a service.

Latent class regression: A statistical method that segments a population into unobserved subgroups based on response patterns to identify distinct user types.

References

1. Understanding motivations to use online streaming services: integrating the technology acceptance model (TAM) and the uses and gratifications theory (UGT). Spanish Journal of Marketing - ESIC (2020).
2. The Return of the King: The Importance of Killer Content in a Competitive OTT Market. Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research (2023).
3. Analysis of OTT Users’ Watching Behavior for Identifying a Profitable Niche: Latent Class Regression Approach. Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research (2022).
4. Examining Factors Influencing Early Paid Over-The-Top Video Streaming Market Growth: A Cross-Country Empirical Study †. Sustainability (2021).
5. On the competition between Video OTT platforms vs Traditional TV: A niche case study in Greece. Telematics and Informatics Reports (2024).
6. Purchase and continuation intentions of over -the -top (OTT) video streaming platform subscriptions: a uses and gratification theory perspective. Telematics and Informatics Reports (2022).