Essay Netflix

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

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?

These first set of changes, cost the company one million customers and a ton of negative press in social media; including 12,000 comments of dissatisfaction. However, at this point, Netflix’s stock prices still rose. Unfortunately, on September 18, 2011, Hastings posted a new announcement to the company blog, trying to separate and over-complicate the two services. He then reversed the changes, in yet another memo, on October 11, 2011. By this point, however, it was too late; more displeased customers had left and Netflix’s stock prices had plummeted. Personally, I believe this situation caused a short-term public relations nightmare; to the customers who were affected at that time. Netflix retained over thirteen million subscribers; given time, I believe the new generation of customers will still be interested in the services they provide.

The year 2011 was considered the “Lost Year” for Netflix as about 1 million of their subscribers dropped their service. Why did this drastic loss of subscribed customers occur and what wrong move did Netflix make to attract such a decrease in subscribers? According to Thompson (2012, p. 127), in June of 2011 Netflix announced a new price plan that caused a 60 percent raise in the the monthly subscription fee for customers who were paying $9.99 per month for access to an unlimited amount of movies and TV shows streamed over the internet and secondly, receiving a limitless number of DVDs every month (by mail one title at a time). Netflix also tried providing its online streaming process through

First formed in 1991, Netflix has become today’s predominant video rental service. They offer a hybrid service allowing DVD delivery by mail as well as streaming movies and TV shows via their company website or access on 200 other devices. Their unique business process has netted them over 16 million subscribers and revenue around $500 million annually. The reason for their growing success can be attributed to a good business model and just as important, properly implemented systems. An extremely efficient supply chain management system (SCM) and customer relationship management system (CRM) have helped Netflix become the world’s largest video subscription service.

Entering and transforming the video rental industry was a large undertaking for the start-up company. The first marketing objective the company undertook was the process of building a brand. Netflix’s identity was crucial to future growth and success. Without a strong brand, competitors with deep pockets could have easily duplicated the company’s business model. Secondly, leveraging technology was critical to establishing the business and infrastructure growth. The consumer base was the final objective Netflix sought to achieve. Retaining and growing subscribers were fundamental to revenue and marketing goals.

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.

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

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.

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

Netflix‘s business model and strategy compare closely to its key rivals. Although, Netflix won a patent that covered much of its business model and could be used to help stifle competition in the future (Thompson C-33) . Netflix has a team of executives that manage only the on-line DVD rental enterprise. They are well established and use a very sophisticated software program thereby making movie selection easy and fun. In my analysis, Blockbuster has many retail stores to contend with and many other facets of a business enterprise, thereby not having a unique team of individuals solely dedicated to the on-line DVD rental business. Wal-Mart would be Netflix’s greatest fear due to the enormous capital available and expertise that could be employed, yet Wal-Mart continues to lag behind Netflix. Wal-Mart’s online software needs a lot of debugging, whereas Netflix had already spent several years debugging its software (Thompson C-37).

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.

Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings founded Netflix in 1997 in California. It is said that the idea came to Hastings after having to pay $40 in overdue fines for returning Apollo 13 to late. Netflix was originally a website (launched on August 29, 1997) that rented DVDs through rental posting and a traditional pay-per-rental model. In the early 2000, Netflix dropped this model and

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