Majority of Netflix subscribers would pay more for the service

Most companies (pharmaceutical giants aside) worry that price increases will drive away customers. However, a new survey of 3,114 Netflix subscribers found that 60 percent of those customers would keep the service if the price went up. And 21 percent of respondents said they’d stick around even if the current $10-a-month price plans jumps by 60 percent or more, according to the survey from TiVo’s Digitalsmiths division.

Netflix already raised prices for its streaming video service earlier this year, and there’s no indication that it plans to bump up costs again. Given the survey results and the company’s significant investment in original content, it also wouldn’t be a surprise if Netflix decides to pull a few more bucks a month out of its subscribers’ pockets.

Would you pay more for Netflix?

When asked about how much more they would be willing to pay for Netflix each month, fewer than a third of the subscribers (29.3 percent) said they would not pay more for Netflix. Just over 39 percent said they’d tolerate a monthly increase of up to $5, to $15 a month, or 50 percent of the current price, and 8.4 percent were okay with a monthly charge of $16 to $19. Some subscribers value Netflix so highly that they say they’d pay $32 a month or more, an increase of 220 percent over the current cost. Roughly 11 percent of those surveyed didn’t answer the question.

Even if Netflix gets pricier, it will still be much cheaper than alternative video services some consumers pay for. For example, about 35 percent of the people surveyed pay $100 or more on pay TV every month, according to Digitalsmiths.

On the flip side, some people pay nothing for home entertainment. The survey found that 10.4 percent of the people who use Netflix and other streaming video services use someone else’s login credentials. A federal court recently said such account sharing is technically illegal, but the chances of being busted for this “crime” are minimal.

(via Variety.com)