Betamax Essay

From my research of the Lodge Bistro I have found the following problems within the company.

2. What forces are driving changes in the movie rental industry? Are the combined impacts of these driving forces likely to be favorable or unfavorable in term of their effects on competitive intensity and future industry profitability?

There are a lot of strong competitors: Blockbuster, Apple, Red box, and etc… Beside, product in this industry is not differentiated. On the other hand, the products and services are not difficult to imitate. This market is very competitive.

Beta Club provides students opportunities to serve their local and global communities through the donation of time, objects, and money. The planning for my personal service project began my first year in the club and has continued through this academic school year. Many of the projects in my school’s chapter of Beta Club serve the local community only and have no global impact. I began to search for organizations which work to benefit those in need across the globe and found Kiva. Individuals in every country can request loan amounts which are funded through micro loans by multiple donors. Loan requests range from agriculture and education to retail and food.

Competition between theaters often comes down to distance from home, convenience of parking and proximity of restaurants. Innovations by one theater chain are quickly adopted by others. The differing approaches of the theater chain companies are reflected in their cost of fixed assets per screen.

1. Netflix’s original marketing strategy offered several flat-rate monthly subscription options; in which, members could stream movies and shows via the Internet or have disks sent to their homes in a pre-paid and pre-addressed envelope. Free from the despair of due dates and late fees, members could keep, up to, eight movies at a time. Upon the return of a disk, Netflix would automatically mail out the next movie from the customer’s video queue. Members were able to change and update their queues as frequently as they liked. The sheer innovation of Netflix’s strategy encouraged several competitors to enter the market to compete directly,

Hulu is a first mover in this space and is currently enjoying the first mover advantage. However with the ubiquity of internet technology accompanied by lower costs and the commoditization of the technology, the barrier to entry will be reduced and more players will be attracted to the profitable online video business, eating into Hulu’s profitability and success. Also, the increase in IT investments in the internet age causes “a Winner-take-all dynamic and high turbulence, as each group of dominant innovators is threatened by succeeding waves of innovation” (McAfee and Brynjolfsson, 2008) in Schumpeterian competition. This makes Hulu’s success vulnerable.

Netflix is an entertainment company that specializes in streaming media and online video-on-demand. Over the years, it has grown to include film and television production and other distribution services. Its business model has changed, and so has its overall production cost grown to keep up with the increased market share. As a result, its current position in the market has made it more exposed to competition from other firms, which is why it needs to develop new strategies to remain profitable. Netflix has grown over the past years despite competition and its unprofitability (Helft, 2007). Therefore, to understand its success, it is important provide a microeconomic analysis of Netflix, its history, its products, and the market.

It can help to pull customers’ needs and preferences in a direction where you want them to go, which is ideally away from the competition’s trends. This has a double effect of you taking market share from them, and making R&D pricier for the competition. It’s also riskier, because at an initial point you have make that same big expenditure yourself, and it may not work, or the competition is doing something equal or superior.

Growing competition as a challenge represents the various companies that are now entering the market of online media-streaming. Companies such as HBO, Amazon, Google, and Hulu Plus have all began to offer media-streaming on the same electronic devices as Netflix, Inc. Currently Netflix, Inc. remains in the lead amongst its competitors; however, there is no guarantee that this advancement is a permanent one. It is inevitable that emerging companies will come up with creative ideas to gain the competitive edge and receive more consumers. For example, Amazon.com has “amplified

A market analysis was first taken out on Reading Courtenay; one cinema under the Reading brand name situated in Wellington. From this analysis, it became apparent that the Internet was one of the company’s largest competitors. Upon further research, the problem revealed to be at such a large level, one single cinema would not be able to control it alone. The view for the marketing plan had to be changed and instead would now support a company-wide view.

As the world entered into the 21st Century, humanity has witnessed an ecology of innovation that ranges from artificial hearts and livers to iPods to Bluetooth technology to smartphones and many more ("21st Century Inventions That Made an Impact”). Each with its own unique attraction has become a catalyst in nature for how individuals think, act and live. Along with these state of the art developments, Netflix has become the cutting – edge service for internet streaming media. Deemed as “a worthless piece of crap” from Wall Street analysts, Netflix with tremendous leadership gained control of their industry and swiftly transformed the delivery of movie rentals ("How Netflix Beat Blockbuster: An Exemplar of Emerging Technologies”). Faced with impossible odds, we will discover how Netflix was able to survive, conquer and prosper as the emerging technology in their industry.

Reading the article, “Blockbuster vs. Netflix,” I thought it was very interesting. I never really understood the reasoning behind Blockbuster’s failure; so after reading this, it was clearer to me. Blockbuster and Netflix are both companies that provide rental videos to their customers, but do it in a way that’s somewhat opposite from one another. Throughout this article it was determined that each company had a core value proposition, a target audience, the reason why one business was more successful that the other, and how Netflix has evolved since this article was written.

One the one hand, the fertility of the industry opened the doors to corporations that sighted substantial growth potential. New entrants with big pockets such as Walmart could pose a certain threat to Netflix, by exploiting a playing card based on cost reduction. On the other hand, barriers to entry became relatively significant as established video rental retailers such as Netflix have the experience and the knowhow to market movies to people. In this industry, firms that do not have a technological advantage can’t compete. The best example is Netflix’s CineMatch program that offered personalized film recommendations based on customer’s rental patterns. This way, Netflix was able to better serve its subscribers. From a cost perspective, the movie rental industry requires high capital expenditures, and the major expenses are highly related to acquisitions of DVD library and investments in technology (exhibit 2 continued). Thus, we may say that entry is difficult in this industry as the competing firms have reputation, experience and recognizable brand names.

First, IT is a "transport mechanism" that carries digital information much the same way that railroads carry goods and power grids transport electricity. And just like these commodities, IT is "far more valuable when shared than when used in isolation." Secondly, IT is highly replicable. With the economic efficiency of off-the-shelf software and the generic business processes that are inherently available within them, the costs savings and interoperability benefits make the sacrifices of "distinctiveness" unavoidable. And, finally, IT is "subject to rapid price deflation." As the cost of processing power, data storage and data transmission has declined, so has one of the most important barriers to commoditization – cost. Again, as cost declines, availability increases, which fuels the case for the commoditization of IT.