Netflix

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,

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?

To understand Netflix’s positioning in the home video industry - offering of movies in the comfort of the home - it is useful to employ Porter’s 5 forces framework to identify the gap they are filling and their strengths and weaknesses.

When Netflix was established in 1998, it shook the whole video rental industry by delivering the services that customers actually wanted. It was not about the movies it had in stock, because these were the same with Blockbuster or any other established video rental business. To them it was about how customers can get the best out of what they had to offer.

Although the corporate strategies implemented by Netflix and Blockbuster have allowed them to become leaders of competitive advantage in the movie rental industry, they sometimes encounter strategic issues that slow down their product and services process. My research of Netflix and Blockbuster will enable me to present a SWOT analysis and recommendations for each company.

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.

According to Ernst & Young LLP (2015), Netflix “is the world’s leading Internet television network with over 57 million streaming members in nearly 50 countries (p. 1).” Since its launch in 2007, Netflix has expanded streaming services internationally into Canada, Latin America, and Europe (Ernst & Young LLP, 2015). However, to continue its success, Netflix must evolve with its business strategy, evaluate the company’s outlook, minimize risk factors, and analyze the auditor’s report that will help investors identify as relevant to an investing decision.

Reed Hastings co-founded Netflix in 1997. During this time, Netflix offered DVD rentals by mail. The Netflix organization went public in 2002, a year later their subscription reached one million (Blodget, 2011). Prior to making new cultural changes, Netflix was a created to provide movie videos at a cheaper piece to customers than competitors, such as Blockbuster. The objective of the Netflix organization was to make easier for customers to rent movies and to eliminate the annoyances involved in picking up and returning the movie rentals to the store. Netflix tried to make the company more like Blockbuster and other video stores, which was challenging. Netflix faced issues of getting movies to customers from a warehouse in a reasonable

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

NetFlix.com, the world’s largest online DVD rental company, was founded by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in 1997, and is headquartered in Los Gatos, California. The company started its online DVD rental business by launching Netflix.com, offering pay-perDVD rental services by delivering DVDs via mail. As the company prospered during late 1999, NetFlix replaced its pay-per-DVD revenue model with a fixed monthly fee system that allowed customers to rent up to 4 DVDs per month with no due dates or late fees. In February 2000, it launched a new plan, where, with a monthly fee of

Netflix is basically an online based business which earns mostly from subscription charges for online streaming of movies and television programs and DVD delivery through internet streaming and US mail respectively. The firm’s formation dates back to 1997 when Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings agreed to establish an online movie rental service in America. Since then, the firm has grown to be an industry giant whose operations have a noticeable impact in the entire industry. Its operations have expanded beyond both North and South America to include Europe, Australia, Africa and Asia. Throughout its growth period, the company has experienced varying dynamics that have created both opportunities and threats for its survival. It is for this reason that this paper explores the SWOT analysis of Netflix, Inc and puts forth recommendations to solve the key problems the organization is facing currently or would face in the near future as per the projections.

Our company JAVK Consulting has examined the Netflix customer model and looked into the company’s five year financial future. We have analyzed Netflix with a scope of entering a rocky internet based company marketplace and seeing success in the future. The company currently is pumping lots of money into marketing strategy in order to growth their customer base and is in turn facing financial troubles while they approach their initial public offering stage.

Starting off as a mail-only service in August of 1997, the service rapidly bloomed into an online, paid source for thousands of movies, series, and other TV shows. Although their streaming option is the most favored, Netflix still offers users the opportunity to order DVDs and other forms of tangible movies. All in all, Netflix holds a multitude of positive and negative effects on society, both which include instant accessibility, immediate forms of entertainment, binge-watching, and unproductivity. Lastly, Netflix may soon become an overwhelmingly large company that takes the television and video distribution industries by storm due to its growing popularity and its ability to be cheaper than regular cable

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.