Netflix Marketing Promotion free essay sample

Netflix developed and maintains an extensive personalized video-recommendation system based on ratings and reviews by its customers. On October 1, 2006, Netflix offered a  $1,000,000 prize  to the first developer of a video-recommendation  algorithm  that could beat its existing algorithm,  Cinematch, at predicting customer ratings by more than 10%. Netflix has played a prominent role in independent film distribution. Through a division called  Red Envelope Entertainment but it closed in 2008, in part to avoid competition with its studio partners. Netflix initiated an  initial public offering  (IPO) on May 29, 2002, selling 5,500,000 shares of  common stock  at the price of US $15. 00 per share. On June 14, 2002, the company sold an additional 825,000 shares of common stock at the same price. After incurring substantial losses during its first few years, Netflix posted its first profit during fiscal year 2003, earning US $6. 5  million profit on revenues of US $272  million. The company is well known for its worker-oriented culture, including unlimited vacation time for salaried workers and allowing those employees to take any amount of their paychecks in  stock options. We will write a custom essay sample on Netflix Marketing Promotion or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Netflix has been one of the most successful  dot-com ventures. A  The New York Times  article from September 2002, said that, at the time, Netflix mailed about 190,000 discs per day to its 670,000 monthly subscribers. [22]  The companys published subscriber count increased from one million in the fourth quarter of 2002 to around 5. 6  million at the end of the third quarter of 2006, to 14  million in March 2010. Netflixs growth has been fueled by the fast spread of  DVD players  in households; as of 2004, nearly two-thirds of U. S. homes had a DVD player. Netflix capitalized on the success of the DVD and its rapid expansion into U. S. homes, integrating the potential of the Internet and e-commerce to provide services and catalogs that brick and mortar retailers could not compete with. Netflix also operates an online affiliate program which has helped it to build online sales for DVD rentals. On September 18, 2011, Netflix announced its intentions to rebrand and structure its DVD home media rental service as an independent  subsidiary  company called  Qwikster, totally separating DVD rentals and streaming. [23][24][25]  Andy Rendich, a 12-year veteran of Netflix, would have been the CEO of Qwikster. The new service would carry  video games  whereas Netflix did not. [26]  Then, in October 2011, Netflix announced that it would retain its DVD service under the name Netflix and would not, in fact, create Qwikster for that purpose. [27]On October 24, 2011, Netflix announced it lost 800,000 US subscribers in the third quarter of 2011 and more subscriber losses were expected in the fourth quarter of 2011. Despite the losses, earnings for Netflix jumped 63 percent for the third quarter of 2011. [28][29]On January 26, 2012, Netflix said it added 610,000 subscribers in the US by the end of the fourth quarter of 2011. The company announced it had 24. 4 million US subscribers for this time period. [30]Netflix first moved internationally by launching their streaming-only service in Canada on September 22, 2010. Then, in spring 2011, Netflix announced they would further expand internationally by launching services Latin America, by the end of 2011, and in the European market, starting in Spain by 2012. Subsequently, Netflix completed the launch of streaming-content services in Latin America in September 2011 by launching in the Caribbean, Mexico, Central and South America. In October 2011, it was announced that Netflix would be launching in the UK and Ireland in early 2012. Netflix was officially launched as a streaming-only service in the United Kingdom and Ireland on January 9, 2012, priced at ? 5. 99 a month in the UK and â‚ ¬6. 99 a month in Ireland. Norwegian media reported in June 2012 that the countrys two biggest broadcasters,  NRK  and  TV 2  confirmed ongoing talks with Netflix. This was interpreted as the company positioning itself for a launch in Norway. The company itself would not confirm this, only that they were planning to launch in another market in the fourth quarter.