Netflix Strategy

Blockbuster was too confident in their brand and their reach that failed to see the threat from the online rental business, meanwhile Netflix took advantage of their slow entrance to build a market and leverage on growing technology (DVD) that took off really quickly.

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,

Netflix has around 75 million subscribers today which suggests that it is a very popular organisation. Netflix at the moment serves many markets across the world whinch included the US and Europe. Netflix suffers from competition from companies such as Amazon prime. Both of these companies compete to gain customers in this compact market. Netflix's corporate strategy fits in with their business level strategy as they deal mainly with DVD rental via online streaming. The deal that is in place with Warner bros has a major impact on how Netflix conducts itself. If other online streaming companies don't face this deal of not being allowed to stream their contents untill 28 days after the public release date then other companies have a competitive advantage which would lower Netflix's revenue. This would cause customers to leave Netflix as they may be able to see films at an earlier date with rival

Netflix is an entertainment company that specializes in streaming media and online video-on-demand. Over the years, it has grown to include film and television production and other distribution services. Its business model has changed, and so has its overall production cost grown to keep up with the increased market share. As a result, its current position in the market has made it more exposed to competition from other firms, which is why it needs to develop new strategies to remain profitable. Netflix has grown over the past years despite competition and its unprofitability (Helft, 2007). Therefore, to understand its success, it is important provide a microeconomic analysis of Netflix, its history, its products, and the market.

The CineMatch software also allows Netflix to maximize their library utilization. Increasing the demand for older or smaller market movies not only assists Netflix in better meeting subscriber demand but also decreases the payout of revenue sharing that often accompanies the most popular new releases. Netflix has revenue sharing contracts with most of the major movie studios. Under the agreements the firm pays a percentage of the subscription fees for a predetermined period of time in exchange for receiving the most popular titles at a considerably discount over the whole sale price (Netflix SEC).

The movie rental industry is a living industry; there are constant changes with advances in technology, rights management, and the slow, but steady, move away from physical Media. Companies such as Netflix, Hulu, RedBox, and Blockbuster are being forced to look at new business models and try to keep up with these changes.

One the one hand, the fertility of the industry opened the doors to corporations that sighted substantial growth potential. New entrants with big pockets such as Walmart could pose a certain threat to Netflix, by exploiting a playing card based on cost reduction. On the other hand, barriers to entry became relatively significant as established video rental retailers such as Netflix have the experience and the knowhow to market movies to people. In this industry, firms that do not have a technological advantage can’t compete. The best example is Netflix’s CineMatch program that offered personalized film recommendations based on customer’s rental patterns. This way, Netflix was able to better serve its subscribers. From a cost perspective, the movie rental industry requires high capital expenditures, and the major expenses are highly related to acquisitions of DVD library and investments in technology (exhibit 2 continued). Thus, we may say that entry is difficult in this industry as the competing firms have reputation, experience and recognizable brand names.

The presence of Netflix and Blockbuster in the movie rental industry has assisted me in developing this analysis of each corporation’s strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats as followed:

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.

Growing competition as a challenge represents the various companies that are now entering the market of online media-streaming. Companies such as HBO, Amazon, Google, and Hulu Plus have all began to offer media-streaming on the same electronic devices as Netflix, Inc. Currently Netflix, Inc. remains in the lead amongst its competitors; however, there is no guarantee that this advancement is a permanent one. It is inevitable that emerging companies will come up with creative ideas to gain the competitive edge and receive more consumers. For example, Amazon.com has “amplified

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.

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.

Step 1: Identify the specific competitive pressures associated with each of the five forces Step 2: Evaluate the strength of each competitive force Step 3: Determine whether the collective strength of the five competitive forces is conducive to earning attractive profits. (Thompson, Strickland and Gamble 2008:54) Competitive rivalry Blockbuster reached a peak of 9,094 company-operated and franchised movie rental stores worldwide. However, when Blockbuster launched an online subscription service in 2004, it met the strong competitor, Netflix, which already had more than 2 million subscribers. Netflix offered a wider choice of subscription plans from $8.99 to $47.99. And it also developed proprietary software to provide subscribers with detailed information about each title in the Netflix library. Netflix offered a high quality service by giving one-business-day delivery capability for most of the subscribers. These kinds of service and performance cause the rivalry to be

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 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