Pros And Disadvantages Of Comcast Corporation

Any change in the factors that make up the macro-environment can have a direct impact on the Comcast Corporation. These factors can affect the Porter Five Forces that shape their strategy and their competitive advantage over other firms.

However, in the era of the Internet, the market has changed. Cable television has been challenged by many alternative venues of media consumption, most notably in the form of the Internet. "There has been some competition from satellite TV players and (in a few areas) TV over IP" (Masnick 2008). "Thanks to the rise of Netflix, Hulu and hardware like the Roku box and Apple TV, cutting the cord to cable TV doesn't mean cutting yourself off from your favorite shows and channels" (Glaser 2010). However, most high-speed Internet consumers receive their Internet connection from the cable company, which indirectly funnels money to support cable TV.

A main component of any company are stakeholders. A stakeholder is a person, group, or organization that has an involvement or interest in a company. Stakeholders can affect a company’s actions as well as be affected by them. There are several key stakeholders in Comcast who play a large role in how the company is ran. These include managers and employees, government agencies and unions, and finally the shareholders.

For the past 45 years Comcast Corporation has provided customers with variety of entertainment. Comcast is the fourth largest cable company in the world. Comcast is now serving more than 21 million customers. Comcast Corporation innovatively provided millions of customers with products and entertainment around the globe. Comcast Corporation has merged with different telecommunication companies as well as other entities such as E! Entertainment television, QVC, and others channels. Comcast Corporation goal is to become the number one cable provider in world (Comcast, 2008).

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,

Comcast Corporation, based in Philadelphia, PA, with its bundling services operates as a media and technology with its two primary business, Comcast Cable and NBCUniversal. Comcast sprung into life in 1963 and went public in 1973 (James, 2014) It has acquired many corporation to take a firm stand where it is at today. Comcast Cable is nation’s largest video, high-speed Internet which has continuously increased its speed 13 times in last 13 years which now offers up to 505 Mbps to residential customers and up to 10 Gbps to businesses as well as phone services under XFINITY brand (Comcast, 2014). NBCUniversal operates in media, entertainment and sports cable network, the NBC and Telemundo broadcast networks, television production operations, television station groups, Universal Pictures and Universal Parks and Resorts (Yahoo Finance, 2015). Comcast also invests heavily in innovative businesses that represent the next generation of entertainment, communications and digital technology by partnering with entrepreneurs who have the vision, passion and tenacity to succeed (Comcast, 2015).

In 1963, with the purchase of American Cable Systems and its 1,200 subscribers in the city of Tupelo, Massachusetts, Ralph Roberts founded Comcast. By 2016 Comcast is one of the nations leading providers of entertainment, communication as well as cable products and services. Nationwide Comcast has over 100,000 employees; each day the company provides over 142 million phone calls, over 136 million emails and over 12 million received voicemails. To date Comcast is the leading cable provider in 19 states nationwide. Since 1963 Comcast has continued to grow with monumental purchases as well as mergers that were blocked by the government in efforts to stop a potential monopoly. Throughout the company’s history, it has grown in three categories Cable, Phone and internet.

Comcast Corporation, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the largest cable company in the United States. Comcast develops broadband cable networks and are involved in electronic retailing and television programming content.

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.

Comcast is a large cable and satellite television provider in the United States. The company has been plagued with internal weaknesses and external threats in recent years and is in desperate need of turning around its customer service department as quickly as possible. Aside from customer service, the way the television industry is marketed to is changing, Comcast has to stay on the cutting edge in price, product quality, flexibility of plans, and customer service. Comcast has many different areas of their business that need to be analyzed to see where they can invest time and monetary resources to improve the quality of their product and service to their customers.

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

The main problem facing Netflix is the pending conflict with its content providers. Netflix has low bargaining power both over suppliers and buyers, and this represents an existential threat to the business. Netflix has proven to be a popular service, but despite the successes of its first ten years, there is now evidence that it has not fostered much brand loyalty, and that its customers are quite price sensitive. Combine this with the fact that its content suppliers are becoming direct competitors in the online streaming business and Netflix is in significant danger of having its growth trajectory derailed.

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

When it comes to watching television shows and movies, streaming websites, such as: Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, have virtually monopolized the market, and have exceedingly brought down cable and theater sales. The mere thought of cable is