COMP6201 E-Business Strategy

1. The story of Netflix is very interesting and a good movie can be made by it. The company has earned huge amount f profit in America. However, the movie of Netflix has come to an end. The company challenges the cable television industry. This industry is larger compare to Netflix (Aversa & Haefliger, 2017). Moreover, it is based on completely different technology and different business model. Large scale companies like Apple and Google operate under this television industry. They all have their own strategy to start premium television series and movie to the citizens of America. Those people are streaming videos to watch their favourite movies or television series. Amazon offers to its prime customers a free streaming. This strong competition among Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Google become interesting. As a result, Netflix cannot compete with them and the movie of this company ends. Netflix is purchased by one of those giant companies.

To expand business and become a strong competitor for Apple or Goggle, the company sets some business strategies. The company felt that it need people, who will subscribe their channels. Hence, they needed more fresh and contemporary television shows. In 2011, Netflix adopted a new strategy with three major forces. Firstly, the company drop its thousands of movies, which have higher prices. However, it did not have enough following. Hence, they pivot towards their streaming TV shows. The company also created new television show content and that was similar to the HBO cable network. In the next year, Netflix and Starz network separated their three-year relationship with each other. Moreover, the company also ended all agreements with MGM and Warner Brothers for older movies. Secondly, Netflix was increasing the amount of older TV series. Those TV series were no longer an interest for cable networks. However, they had a huge amount of followers. Thirdly, the company was starting to produce their own content. For example, Netflix declared that they would produce a new TV series with famous actors, in 2011. The company finally broke out in 2013 into the Big Leagues of TV show distribution and production. Here, TV show distribution means internet distribution. To increase their TV show inventory, Netflix declared a deal with DreamWorks Animation.

In 2011, Netflix was facing various problems due to its low stock point and high point for rebellion of subscriber. Hence, various factors prevent the company to become more powerful challenger for cable television networks companies.

Netflix is expanding their business in different dimensions. It starts its own television show to attract viewers with some famous actors.

Netflix is competing with Apple, Amazon and Google, as they are the biggest competitors of the company. Moreover, they have different market strategies. Hence, it is very difficult for Netflix to capture its market.

The biggest competitors of Netflix are Amazon, Apple and Google. They are making their large cloud infrastructures and that would be less costly compare to Netflix (Dolata, 2017). Hence, it is very difficult for Netflix to survive in future. However, the company can compete with its competitors by adopting good business strategies. Therefore, there are still some positive possibilities for the company to stay market.

At present, people are now demanding more online streaming videos compare to cable TV. From Netflix and other streaming services, viewers can easily watch their favourite programs. Moreover, they do not pay extra amount for all channels, which they do not want to see. Hence, the demand of Netflix is growing faster. In future, people will prefer online platforms to watch their favourite movies (Johnson, 2018). However, cable operators can improve their technology to capture the market by improving their technologies. On the other side, Netflix can dominate the market. Hence, it is impossible to determine that whether the company will survive in future or not.

2. It is very important for a company to use e-commerce platform. The company can expand its business all over the world through this platform. For doing business on this platform, it is very important for a company to build an appropriate site. For most of the companies, it is very easy to purchase an e-commerce server suite. Those servers are generally more easy access, faster and normally more cost-effective. For start-up e-commerce business applications, there are some basic packages available in the market. Bizland, Yahoo Merchant Solutions and Hyper Mart. provide those basic e-commerce suits. On the other side, IBM, Oracle and some other companies provide midrange suits. Except those companies, some other companies in the market provide e-commerce suits as well (Einav et al., 2017). However, before choosing an e-commerce suite, it is very essential to analyse some key factors. Otherwise, an e-commerce suit can increase the cost structure of a company. Those key factors are functionality, supporting for various business models, modelling tools of business process, visual site management tool and reporting, performing and scalability, connectivity to exist business systems, compliance with standard, local sales tax and shipping rules and global and multicultural capability.

To choose the best e-commerce suite for a business firm, online research is very important. Here, IBM’s WebSphere Commerce Express Edition and Commerce Server 10 are taken to prepare an evaluation chart. IBM’s e-commerce suite provides set-up wizard, templates and a huge part of catalogue and store editing tools. Moreover, it provides scalable architecture and considerable customisability ((Turban et al., 2018). This suite can support different types of business models from business to customers (B2C), business-to-business (B2B) and customers to customers (C2C). On the other side, multilingual support and good combination of backend support, including DB2 and Oracle databases are some other features of this suite. A person can run this suite in any server.

Commerce Server 10 was formally known as Microsoft Commerce Server. This support also includes various pre-defined reports. By running those reports, a person can analyse site activities and sales data related to product. By applying SQL server data mining tool, the suite can analyse data nicely. However, the chief drawback of this suite is that it only runs on Microsoft Windows Server.

Figure 1: Evaluation table between two e-commerce suites

Source: (created by author)

Each e-commerce suite states that they can do everything, what a businessperson needs to do. However, for a particular business organisation, some special features are required. Hence, it is important for a businessperson to set required business functionalities. For a normal business organisation, Commerce Server 10 is helpful.

3. Mobile marketing is different from desktop marketing by its various features. Smartphone and tablets are capable and portable. Those electronic gadgets play more vital role in the daily life of each consumer, compare to desktop and laptops. Consumers can carry and access Smartphone easily at anywhere and anytime (Turban et al., 2018).  Moreover, this gadget has various affects on marketing as it is considered as more consumer friendly. Smartphone can detect the location of a consumer and gives information regarding local markets. Mobile phones can do this by using their GPS.  However, desktop cannot locate the current location of the consumer, as it is not movable.

Mobile phone almost has all features of online marketing. Most of the online marketing sites have their applications for mobile phones (Rowles, 2017). The maximum opportunities of a mobile phone for marketing are display ads, videos and search ads, messaging like SMS, MMS and PPS. It also has some features like e-mail, leading generation and classification.

In 2013, mobile marketing was popular for search engine advertisement. After voice call and message, online search is remaining the second most demanding application. For the mobile phone platform, search engine ads can be optimised by featuring ads that are based on physical location of customers (Turban et al., 2018). The second leading ad format is display ads. This type of ads is featured in mobile website or inside games and apps. Some largest provider of mobile display advertisements are Facebook, Apple’s iAd, Google’s AdMob and MillenialMedia. Rich media and video ads capture only 7% of total mobile marketing. However, these features are increasing rapidly because of their high rate of clicking. Some large retail shops provide information to their customers through mobile messages. People can more easily access mobile messages compare to e-mails (Verhoef et al., 2017). Social media also bring their desktop advertisement over the platform of mobile phone. Hence, by observing all those features, it can be said that mobile marketing is different from desktop marketing and comparatively better.

Aversa, P., & Haefliger, S. (2017). Business Model Portfolio Diversification. working paper, Cass Business School, London.

Dolata, U. (2017). Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft: Market concentration-competition-innovation strategies (No. 2017-01). Stuttgarter Beiträge zur Organisations-und Innovationsforschung, SOI Discussion Paper.

Einav, L., Klenow, P. J., Klopack, B., Levin, J. D., Levin, L., & Best, W. (2017). Assessing the gains from e-commerce. Working paper, Stanford University.

Johnson, D. (Ed.). (2018). From Networks to Netflix: A Guide to Changing Channels. Routledge.

Rowles, D. (2017). Mobile marketing: how mobile technology is revolutionizing marketing, communications and advertising. Kogan Page Publishers.

Turban, E., Outland, J., King, D., Lee, J. K., Liang, T. P., & Turban, D. C. (2018). Business-to-Business E-Commerce. In Electronic Commerce 2018 (pp. 123-166). Springer, Cham.

Turban, E., Outland, J., King, D., Lee, J. K., Liang, T. P., & Turban, D. C. (2018). Mobile commerce and the internet of things. In Electronic Commerce 2018 (pp. 205-248). Springer, Cham.

Verhoef, P. C., Stephen, A. T., Kannan, P. K., Luo, X., Abhishek, V., Andrews, M., … & Hu, M. M. (2017). Consumer connectivity in a complex, technology-enabled, and mobile-oriented world with smart products. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 40, 1-8.