Abstract

This study examined whether the 7Ps of the marketing mix directly shaped OTT subscription behaviour or worked mainly through the stages of the AIDA model—Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action.
Data were collected through a structured survey of 507 Indian OTT users. Responses captured all seven elements of the marketing mix (product, price, place, promotion, people, process, and physical evidence), along with AIDA and the final purchase choice. A PLS-SEM approach was applied to test the proposed structure. The formative specification of the 7Ps was evaluated for stability and conceptual soundness. Predictive assessment was conducted using PLSpredict with a 10-fold cross-validation procedure, repeated 10 times with a fixed seed to support transparency and reproducibility. Strengthening user interest and desire first, followed by reducing payment frictions, aligns with the model’s explanatory power (R² = 0.509 for AIDA; R² = 0.601 for Purchase). In a price-sensitive setting, this MAP-T sequence helped turn routine marketing actions into steadier subscription gains.. These included content preferences, payment ease, simplified purchase flow, standard invoicing practices, and festival-linked timing. The expanded structure resulted in the MAP-T model, which aligns behavioural theory with practical decision cues observed in digital subscription settings.
The findings indicated strong predictive capacity. The association between the marketing mix and AIDA was substantial (β = 0.49), while the path from AIDA to Purchase remained the most influential driver of attitudinal shift (β = 0.423). The model accounted for 50.9% of the variance in AIDA and 60.1% of the variance in the Purchase outcome. The total indirect effect of the 7Ps on Purchase was 0.207 (p < .001), confirming that the sequential pathway played a dominant role. Checkout-related triggers added small but statistically meaningful direct increments to Purchase, such as ease of payment (β = 0.159) and content preferences (β = 0.129). These action cues also strengthened AIDA. Predictive evaluation showed positive Q²_predict values for both AIDA (≈ 0.500) and Purchase (≈ 0.504), with low prediction errors, indicating strong out-of-sample performance. A similar pattern emerged when the 7P structure was estimated as a formative construct, further supporting the stability of the results.
For practical application, firms should focus on strengthening user interest and desire before easing payment-related hurdles. In a price-sensitive setting, this MAP-T sequence helped convert routine marketing inputs into more stable subscription gains.