Situational Analysis At Netflix Research Assignment (Research Paper Sample)

Situational Analysis (NETFLIX)
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Situational Analysis: NETFLIX
Introduction
Every company’s dream/vision is to have strong economic, cultural, technological and political-legal muscles that would help it spread its wings to markets far and wide. Netflix is not an exception, and since its inception in 1997 ("A brief history of Netflix", 2017), its founders and shareholders have worked to ensure that this is a dream comes true for them. Being a company that deals majorly with online movie rental service, it means that all its strategies have to be on getting more and more subscribers per minute or even per second. It is the only way that business would boom for them. After acquiring them, they have to think of strategies on how to maintain them (the subscribers) so as to keep doing what brought them to the online movie rentals niche (which is their purpose).
Netflix’ Economic Environment
The world’s current economy has been one that is not hospitable at all. It bites literary everybody even the world superpowers. Many companies have been chewed and spat out by it and they are no longer in existence. Netflix, however, has created a niche that many other companies are still yet to catch up with. This means that it has competitors, yet these competitors, in reality, are trying to catch up with them by learning from them. When Netflix began twenty years ago (1997) in California, it rented out movies for six USD and soon this changed to a monthly subscription service and then later, it now diversified to be streaming movies online where subscribers would use various devices to catch up on their favorite movies and series. By 2002, in May, Netflix went public and sold five million five hundred thousand USD worth of shares of common stock at the IPO price ("Netflix : Overview", 2017). This means that each share cost fifteen dollars, and having sold five million five hundred thousand of them, they raised eighty-two million, five hundred thousand USD. By this time, there were no competitors who were around this rate whether in assets or liabilities, making it the leading in this niche. The number of subscribers kept on increasing and by 2012, Netflix had twenty-seven million subscribers up from the one million they had in the fourth quarter of 2002. Even though they incurred losses during the first years of their businesses, they managed to lay down useful strategic management policies that saw them make profits worth six million, five hundred thousand USD in 2003 ("Netflix : Overview", 2017).
Netflix Technology
Having started initially as a DVD for rent where the clients would request for DVD by mail, Netflix has explored various ways in which they would incorporate the demands of their clients (some who wanted the DVDs and others who wanted to watch online) ("A brief history of Netflix", 2017). This exploration sent its engineers to begin looking for means in which they would be able to help clients watch crystal clear movies online and at the same time, be able to order DVDs. The engineers have created means by which the clients have options of watching these movies from different devices such as on Television, Ipads, Smartphones, Tablets, Desktops and Laptops.
To ensure that the clients have convenience in terms of speed and clarity, there are various centers set aside by Netflix in various states, cities, and countries that ensure that clients next to those regions receive superb networks that would cause them to have hitch free streaming(s). Whenever the companies that manufacture these devices upgrade their devices, Netflix engineers would ensure that they upgrade their systems too (to make the devices compatible with the video formats of Netflix) so that the clients are able to continue watching movies at their convenience. This is what has made Netflix to have millions of subscribers ("Netflix : Overview", 2017). These are some of the external factors that affect Netflix’ operation including others such as the political and socio-cultural environment. Without a doubt, there are internal factors that affect the environment such as the corporate structure, corporate resources, corporate resources (such as operations and logistics, finance, Research, and Development) among many other factors.
Internal Factors
Concerning a company’s culture, it first begins with the individual staff’s culture(s), they would have to accept...