Netflix And The Movie Rental Industry

Threat of New Competition: Netflix has almost zero threat of new competition. Any new competition would have to overcome large capital expenses to get started; these expenses include obtaining TV show and movie rights from the studios. Even if the starting

Netflix was founded in 1997 with the intent to revolutionize the way in which consumers watch movies and television shows. Their accomplishments both in innovation and in customer base for their service indicate that the firm has been, and continues to be, successful in doing so. Currently, the

Netflix does not allow customers to watch all released movie on demand. There are some movie that customer cannot instantly watch. If Netflix developed streaming service and figure out a problem of coexisting between rentals and streaming service, Netflix can create competitive advantage.

When Netflix started business, their main goal was to offer customers movies on rent (old product) in a new way, which would be instead on customers coming and selecting a movie from the collection they could browse the collection online and order the DVD through mail. Customers appreciated the uniqueness of this type of product differentiation. Netflix is also different because it did not charge its customers on per title basis, instead charged a subscription fee for the

Netflix, an internet television network that is revolutionizing the way we watch TV series and movies without having to leave the comfort of our couch has over 50 million subscribers in more than 40 countries.

This is primarily because there is no product differentiation in the market. Additionally, Netflix would then lose its flagship brand essence the supportive roles played by these two integral competencies of the company. The well-developed IT management allowed Netflix to move from DVD only to DVD and streaming, allowing the tap into the streaming market and a chance for the company to expand business.

Netflix introduced an online streaming service in 2007. At the time of its introduction, the streaming service had a catalog of 1,000 movies and TV shows (Helft, 2007). From 2008 to 2010, Netflix partnered with different electronic companies to provide streaming through Xbox 360, Blu-ray players, PS3, smart televisions, Apple devicesm and Nintendo Wii. (Netflix) Since 2010, Netflix began to launch the service outside the United States with Canada being the first country. In 2016, Netflix became available all over the world (Netflix).

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

The competitive forces in the movie rental industry are quite strong, as I will explain through the five forces model. There are a vast amount of substitutes for watching a movie. You can go to a play, sporting event, concert, out the lake/beach, go for a run, watch regular television, go shopping; I could go on and on. Also, torrenting or pirating movies is growing increasingly popular. Buyers have a strong presence in this industry mainly because they are picky about how much they will pay to rent or stream a movie. With the amount of substitutes and their pickiness, they make this

Netflix Inc. is in the entertainment market, which is a part of a larger video, film

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).

Netflix exhibits dominant economic characteristics in the online movie rental business. They enjoy strong market size and growth rate when compared to rivalry competition. The number of rivalries are increasing, and the market remains dominated by only a few sizeable rivalries like Blockbuster Video, Wal-Mart, Walt Disney Movies and Movielink’s Downloadable Movies. Netflix is determined to offer new and innovative technology to sustain their competitive advantage.

Many of their competitors have longer operating histories, larger customer bases, greater brand recognition and significantly greater financial, marketing and other resources than Netflix does. Some of their competitors have adopted, and may continue to adopt, aggressive pricing policies and devote substantially more resources to marketing and Web site and systems development than Netflix does. The rapid growth of their online entertainment subscription business since their beginning may attract direct competition from larger companies with significantly greater financial resources and national brand recognition. For instance in 2003 the extremely wealthy Wal-Mart used their online site to launch an online DVD subscription service, Wal-Mart DVD Rentals. With increased competition reduced operating margins may result as well as a loss of market share and reduced revenues. In addition, our competitors may form or extend strategic alliances with studios and distributors that could adversely affect our ability to obtain titles on favorable terms.

If one is not convince that Netflix is an online retailer like no other, I could always argue with the 2013 online sales made by the top 15 U.S. retailers (figure below). Most of the companies listed below are either click-and-mortar companies, or pure players. They sell or rent office furniture, hardware & software, clothes, food. Only Netflix stands out, by providing a subscription-based model where people can access thousands of movies either by disc rental or by streaming.

Netflix was founded by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in 1997 and was originally based out of Scotts Valley California. The business model that they were working towards was to create a company that would offer online movie rental service made available by streaming media as well as DVD’s that could be ordered online and delivered to the customers’ homes. (Wheelen, Case 12). Netflix had a strategic plan to undercut the competition in an effort to stress the market and force weaker competition out of the field. This was a very successful plan and over a period of years it was able to force the closings of most of its competing market to include the mega giant Blockbuster video. Using a business