Netflix

Final Case Report

TO: Mike Carey, Vice President of Marketing – Netflix

DATE: February 19, 2015

SUBJECT: Marketing Strategies for Netflix

Purpose and Overview

The purpose of this report is to offer marketing strategies for Netflix. The report presents external opportunities and threats and internal strengths and weaknesses that emerged from our situation analysis. Assumptions on which the strategies are based are also provided. Our recommendations involve improving and/or implementing various specific marketing strategies within your organization. A detailed analysis of these recommendations are outlined in the following sections. By taking an effective approach to these strategies, we believe Netflix will continue to see success and bring products to the marketplace that will have high demand. Netflix will be able to surpass their stockholder’s expectations and continue to see high growth and profits if implementation of these recommendations are taken.

Summary of Our Past and Current Situations

The idea of Netflix started in 1997 when Reed Hasting, the current CEO of the company, paid a $40 late fee after renting Apollo 13. Hastings and his fellow software executive Marc Randolph first started off by offering a rent-by-mail service that didn’t require a subscription, but the venture did not take off as expected. In late 1999, the company decided to offer its first subscription-based service with the first month being a free trial. It was discovered that eighty percent of the customers whom signed up for a free trial renewed after the trial ended.

In 2003, Netflix became profitable for the first time, and during the same quarter the company hit one million subscribers. In 2007, the company introduced their streaming platform and had a subscription base of over 6.3 million customers. The company took a long term look into what they wanted to accomplish and set a goal to reach 20 million members by the year 2012. This goal was met earlier...