Essay on Marketing Plan for Blockbuster Enrertainment

Increase foothold in China's telecommunications industry via deals like JBC, given there is a prospect of liberalization of state owned telecommunications markets

Now it\ 's year three. The CEO wants to know your plan for sustaining market growth.

Blockbuster Entertainment, Inc. was once a highly successful and profitable brick and mortar home movie and video game rental store. At its peak in 2004, Blockbuster had up to 60,000 employees and more than 9,000 stores. The idea behind Netflix came from an unsatisfied, embarrassed customer of Blockbuster, Mr. Reed Hastings, now CEO of Netflix, paid a $40 late fee because he returned the movie Apollo 13 six weeks later (Zarafshar, 2013). He began to contemplate ingeniously about a notion to change the movie-leasing pattern into a more pioneering industry. In 1997 Netflix was started as a DVD rental-by-mail business without subscriptions. In 1999, taking a stride additional in the direction of evolving the industry, Hastings began the subscription-based business mode based on renting DVDs by mail with plans reliant on the quantity of titles taken at a time. Netflix put forward 120,000 titles for limitless monthly DVD rental with free shipping no late and per title fees. Since that time Netflix has become one of the most popular subscription services in the world, and is now valued at over $28 billion and steadily increasing. What factors contributed to the success and failure of these two companies?

What role has Netflix played in the development of Blockbuster’s strategic planning? How important is Netflix to Blockbuster’s future strategic plans?

Netflix began in 1997 as a revolutionary idea by CEO Reed Hastings and software executive March Randolph. Before long, in 1999 Netflix launched its major line of business, the online subscription service, which radically changed the way consumers viewed movies and television. For a young company in an innovative and growing industry, Netflix has set itself up for a tremendous journey. The company has had much success due to its adaption of a modern business model and strength in operations management. Its continued reliance on and improvements of operation management principles is necessary to continue growing and bringing in profits.

Opportunities include huge market, no competition for at least three years, potential huge margin, good marketing strategy.

At the beginning Netflix had a clearly visible competitor and that was Blockbuster which had a strong projection and development in the film and video industry. Although Netflix represented a new and risky concept in that industry, it was a competitor who dethroned Blockbuster. When trying to implement its services Netflix suffered from ups and downs with its customers, for example: When Netflix decided to separate DVD mailing services from the option of watching programs and movies on the Internet instantly through streaming, many members canceled their subscription, The company's shares went down and the reputation of a brand that was characterized by its respect for the customer collapsed. Until this moment Netflix had not had a real competition.

The main reason Netflix was able to become successful in such a short period of time over block buster is due to the DVD plans they offer, members select movies and TV shows from there website and they receive them on DVD by United States mail and return them using prepaid mailers with no due dates, no late fees or shipping charges and no cancellation fees, after an individual returned a DVD they mail the next available DVD. Netflix change the procedures by changing how things were done. It started offering a lot more movies which are convenient and at a lower price for customers. These are its competitive advantages against blockbuster. The monthly fee Netflix offer make it easy for individuals to rent as much they wanted. . They also have

The video rental industry began with brick and mortar store that rented VSH tape. Enhanced internet commerce and the advent of the DVD provided a opportunity for a new avenue for securing movie rentals. In 1998 Netflix headquartered in Los Gatos California began operations as a regional online movie rental company. While the firm demonstrated that a market for online rentals existed, it was not financially successfully. Netflix lost over $11 million in 1998 and as a result significantly changed the business model in 2000. The new strategy included focusing on becoming a nationally based subscription model and focusing on enhancing the subscribers experience on their website. The change in

This report is based on market orientation process of Blockbuster and its role in achieving the organization goal and objectives. From this report, it is analysed that the market orientation plays an important role in the success of organization and to have the holistic view about different factors that affect the growth of the firm. In addition, it is seen that Blockbuster became the biggest Video chain in the USA and expanded it self around the world, but when it was growing faster, how it’s failure to understand market orientation, macro and micro industry requirement also its marketing Myopia brought Blockbuster to bankruptcy.

The timeline of the company’s existence shows the culture of inaction at the top level delayed changes for a very long time. The company introduced Blockbuster Total Access program aimed at online as well as in store renting as late as November 2006 (Blockbuster Corporate, 2012). On the other hand, Netflix started its journey in 1996 and introduced its subscription service in 1999 and by 2010 it had 20 million subscribers (Netflix, 2012).

But Netflix wasn’t the only company in the streaming market, it faced competition from Amazon Prime and Amazon Instant Video, both of which were offered by Amazon.com due to which it didn’t have the meaningful first mover advantage in the market leading to erosion of its profit margins. Netflix was again forced to evolve its business model and differentiate itself in order to capture value and regain profitability. The evolved business model focused on content marketing. Here are few ways the video-streaming and DVD-by-mail giant is winning at content marketing.

The original Netflix business foundation was based around the idea of being a leader in mailing DVDs. In 1999, to compete with the video rental market, especially Blockbuster, they launched a

Rivalry among industry competitors – Netflix and Blockbuster are in a highly competitive industry. Competitors include merchant retailers, such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Target; video and game store like Hollywood Video, Movie Gallery, and Game Stop; supermarkets, convenient stores such as Publix, and McDonald's. The significant rival is Hollywood Video which offers movie and game rentals (Xie & Lin, 2008).

Blockbuster opened in 1985 and in its “first 20 years of business, the movie rental giant opened 9.100 stores in 25 countries” (Laudon, 2007, p. 121).   Netflix launched in 1998 using a new business model and became Blockbusters biggest threat. The paradigm shift in the rental industry from having to travel to a store and rent a movie to being able to have a movie delivered to your mailbox changed the way people think about media entertainment. The next shift will be having the technology to download movies and shows directly to a television.