As per the company, this was because the feature’s usage has declined over the years. But was there enough awareness about this feature amongst the target audience? The ‘Watch Party’ feature was introduced on Prime Video 4 years ago during the pandemic. This
feature allowed users to watch movies and TV shows together with friends and family, even when physically apart. As people started returning to the office post-pandemic, their time spent on OTT platforms decreased, automatically reducing the feature’s usage. Does this mean the customers do not need the feature? That might not be true.
Moreover, as the OTT market is highly competitive and has negligible switching costs for the customer, Amazon Prime needs a differentiated factor to get ahead of the competition. Watch party itself was one of the differentiated offerings that most competitors still don’t have. Moreover, it is a great way of onboarding more customers and increasing customer engagement on the application.
What is in for AMAZON PRIME to continue the Watch Party feature, given that they promote it well?
- Differentiated feature
- Competitive advantage
- Enhanced Customer Engagement
- Boost in content consumption
Therefore, in my opinion, increasing awareness through appropriate advertising could have been a better approach, as any similar feature is not directly supported by any of the competitors except Netflix.