Netflix Case Study Essay

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 was the first company to create an online DVD movie rental service. The service has created a new ‘movie’ market niche which has secured them a competitive ‘first-mover’ advantage in this new ‘high-tech’ venture. The popularity of the service has sparked the interest of market competitor Blockbuster who may become a growing threat to Netflix should they enter the online movie rental market (Perreault, 2004).

The third issue affecting Netflix is the age of movies that they offer to their customers. Netflix cannot deliver the newest movie titles online because they are not offered through VOD for at least a month after they come out on DVD. This is a huge disadvantage to their customers that exclusively use Netflix’s online service. This is the only advantage that Blockbuster still has over Netflix, because if someone wants to see a movie the day that it comes out on video then

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?

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,

Instead of various local chain stores, Netflix operated from a single virtual store that offered customers new rental features. The web services platform utilized customization and a user-friendly design to facilitate renting movies. “CineMatch,” a proprietary developed application, tailored the virtual store to each subscriber. This technology produced customized rental suggestions for customers while maximizing potential inventory. “CineMatch” incorporated a subscriber rating system of past rentals to generate more efficient and personalized future recommendations. The web-based services also improved selection through the ability to easily browse Netflix’s large inventory catalog and add selections to a personalized “Queue,” which lists movies customers have scheduled to receive. Instead of being forced to navigate through the traditional genre and alphabetized catalog, Netflix offered an easier movie selection process. Besides the selection efficiencies, members have the ability to share ratings, reviews, and movie selections with each other through the “Community” feature.

2). Therefore, Hastings have changed the dynamics of the movie-rentals and entertainment industry in which people tend to watch movies whenever they want rather than waiting at video stores or entertainment channels. Moreover, Hastings adaptability of business towards the live streaming of TV shows has impacted the cable service industry because Netflix is providing its customers with the hundreds of TV channels at low cost and high portability (Copeland,

From a streaming service where its core competency is its ability to sustain popularity, range and price of its content, Netflix should utilize its market power and position in the streaming sector into the networks industry. Its subscription power is key with 1% retention equating to approximately 5% in firm value due to the tense environment it is currently competing in (Jordan, 2011, p. 4). Thus, their already vertically integrated and high acclaimed ‘Originals’ content is its strongest operational related strategy as it uses the same streaming platform as its other shows with no additional cost. By focusing on creating its own content, Netflix’s core competency essentially shifts from its ability to win bidding wars for rights to shows

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.

Netflix, the online subscription-based DVD rental service aimed to better satisfy customer in a way competitors didn’t, customized and personalized service with unlimited monthly rentals from a great variety of film offerings. Now they want to leverage their strengths to enter into the Video on Demand market

Video-on-demand or VOD, a service that allows users to select and watch videos over the internet, will be one of the greatest innovation as stated in the Netflix case study. It will be a great opportunity for Netflix, but it will also be a challenge to integrate or do away with its current business model. Its current business model is one that relies on the internet and the post service to deliver DVDs to its subscribers. Netflix should carefully enter the VOD market without doing away with its current model. This will allow it to maintain its growing position as a giant in this media industry. In order to better understand Netflix and the problems it faces, we must first identify its strengths. What does Netflix offer its customers that its competitors do not? What differentiates it from its competitors?

In many ways, Netflix is an amazing company to analyze. By being disruptive, the company has changed drastically the disc rental business and the streaming industry. In addition, the ecommerce business model Netflix has developed was one of a kind, focusing mainly on the consumer’s needs and experience. Now, it might seem obvious that ecommerce marketers should focus on these aspects but at the time it was a first.

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

Netflix is recovering from one of the worst self-inflicted corporate marketing gaffes in years. After years of offering an excellent value to customers purchasing its unlimited single DVD and streaming services for only $9.99 a month, Netflix unexpectedly announced that it would be completely separating its DVD service from its streaming service, causing a price increasing of 60% to $15.98 for customers who wanted to keep both services. Overnight, Netflix angered many of its very loyal customers and lost over 800,000 of its 24.6 million members due to the debacle [1]. Adding fuel to the fire, Netflix decided to actually create separate brands and separate websites for the two services, keeping the Netflix name for its streaming services

Netflix, an addictive media streaming concept born in August of 1997, has revolutionized the way in which we view films and television series. The appealing and amusing service wholly encompasses a wide range of aspects such as its own plethora of original series, video-on-demand titles, rentable DVDs, and even offers its users the ability to watch and live stream content from anywhere they please. Starting at merely $7.99 a month, the streaming service is affordable, accessible, and an overall satisfactory form of entertainment that has expanded worldwide and is continuing to reach a vast majority, all while impacting society is a multitude of negative and positive ways.