The Goal of Netflix's Skills Direct Promotion Methods

Netflix is in a fairly favorable position on the strategic group map. Where Added value is measured in terms of instant movies and recommendations, and market coverage is measured in number of stores, vending machines, and online presence.

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 finds its competition and strategic challenges against big names in the market –Google, Apple and Amazon to name a few (Roberts & Zahay, 2012). The challenge for Netflix lies in maintaining the innovative streak, which will add creativity and youth to its brand image and the brand itself. This innovative streak has to be continual and has to match the demands and preferences of the customers in their taste and liking. The brand and the company cannot afford to remain stagnant and rigid in the ever changing and demanding market place. The core competency that Netflix will have to focus on to meet this challenge is to develop and train its human resource. Effective and efficient human resource management will allow the company to tap into present and potential customers, as well as, allow the company to serve them appropriately.

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,

A quick review of the process shows us that Netflix’s proprietary SCM software decides what movies are to be sent and where they are going to be sent to. How does this system add value to the company and is it necessary for them to operate? Well it starts adding value initially by reducing costs. When the company first started it had around 75,000 customers but required over 100 employees per distribution center in order to insure quick turnaround. Now with a customer base in the millions, distribution centers average around 45 employees (Cohen). This is due to the software allowing a lesser amount of people to handle a larger work load. According to Tom Dillon, lower costs translate to competitive

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

It is imperative from the prospect of Netflix that they should assess external environment of the business or related industry for the reason that it would help them

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.

1. Continue building strong partnerships with other providers – the company should continue partnering up with other providers preferably the multichannel television providers such as HBO and Starz in order to increase their selection of streaming titles. This will definitely help the company not only gain but also attract more customers or consumers and therefore increase market share. This would help lower the churn rate and help expand their subscriber base. Streaming titles can also be increased and improved if the company decides to partner up with these other multichannel providers. Based on research carried out in researching about Netflix it is being understood that Netflix is in partnership with multiple other companies or television providers. Due to all of these partnerships being formed the members or frequent customers are now being able to enjoy the benefits of watching these TV episodes, shows and also movies which are made possible to be streamed to their computers and televisions via the use of Netflix ready devices. In the case of Netflix partnering up with TV provider STARZ, for example, it is obvious that Netflix formed the partnership with STARZ entertainment LLC a movie service provider to make movies from STARZ play available for instant streaming at Netflix ( Netflix Inc 2013). If Netflix continues to work well with these providers the partnerships would be a good relationship which would be beneficial to both

1. Advertise the new bundle price of the online streaming and DVD rental. The advertisement department should develop new commercials about the changes that Netflix is about to offer for customers. The publicity of the new prices should ensure the growth on the profit for the company.

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

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

“Netflix growth strategy entails making the best product and the best consumer experience even better. Lead the expansion

Because users of the above websites and social media outlets overlap heavily with Netflix’s target demographic, the coverage of their selected audience will be stronger than most other forms of communication (and e-mails and letters to their