A Study on Why Netflix Has Been Successful in Its Marketing

Netflix D2 Unit 3

In this task I will be make justified recommendations for improving the validity of the marketing research used to contribute to the development of Netflix marketing plans.

To start off, I will review their method of conducting primary research to gather first-hand information. This would be more beneficial to the company for the company as it provides answers to questions which are directly related to their project. That, is the researcher can tailor the questions that are according to the needs of Netflix. One form of research that Netflix have used for primary research to gain qualitative data, is the use of focus groups. This has helped Netflix to find new suggestions for their product in order to fulfil customer’s expectations. This type of research can also be valuable; given that Netflix wants to meet what the criteria of what the most popular genre of films the customers like and what they expect to see.

Netflix also use secondary which provides vital information about competitors, their activities and products. This is definitely important as it demonstrates whether the product that Netflix is working on is unique. This shows Netflix what features it has to improve to further amend its product idea. This can allow Netflix to be ahead of their competition and perform better than the others, such as putlocker, and amazon prime. In addition to this, information about competitors can provide the overview in terms of what Netflix should issue for its products. This will be done if they are willing to offer something different. This can prove to be very helpful as if Netflix is not really aware of many competitors within the similar market as them. It will not be able to adjust its own prices to encourage customers to purchase and use their product rather than their visible competitors.

My recommendation to Netflix will be to avoid relying solely on research carried by others as of their competitors. Even though this is seen as the most appropriate ways of secondary information. Netflix should still make an effort to back the results from elsewhere as well. The organisation needs to use a variety of data sources, such as internet, for general overviews, books, journals and possibly government publications. The government publications can inform the company about information concerning the legal, economic, social and political factors which can influence Netflix’ business activities. This will allow the company to gain a greater knowledge of situations which may affect it. Thus it will allow them to make early preparations for what they must do to keep the business running and to save themselves in times of difficulty and thus reduce the impact on their profits.

Another recommendation that I would give to Netflix is to improve the validity of their market research is for an organisation that is as popular as Netflix is to be choosing the right amount of people to question. One of the main objectives for Netflix will be to improve their customer’s satisfaction. If the amount of people that are questioned are too small there results will be invalid, therefore Netflix should make the sample of a sufficient size as it will increase the chances of gathering accurate information which will allow them to make their right decision to change what is required for their customer satisfaction. If Netflix carries out research to find out how satisfied their customers are with their product and question only 10% of them, they could say that they are highly satisfied with the service from Netflix, however the other 90% might not agree with what has been said. Therefore I suggest that Netflix should at least be questioning 25% of their customers which is a quarter so this will give them a bigger range and would reduce the chance of them using invalid data. The only reason they should not question all of them as it will be physically impossible to question a 100% of the people as not everybody will be willing to participate.

To be able to provide an affordable product to their customers is another objective that Netflix would be aiming to achieve. If Netflix was to increase the price of the product there would have to be a researched carried out in order to determine whether there has been a decrease in sales due to the increase of price or whether it has stayed stable and has not affected them in any way. In order for Netflix to gather this information and to have it as valid as possible they would have to target different groups of their customers for example Netflix can use quantitative type of research in order to find out how many customers would be affected if there was an increase in their price. The questions should be asked to the students, adults and even the elderly who use Netflix. This way the research will focus on all types and not just one; the reason being is that adults may be working and earning money and they can afford to pay the prices, whereas all students may not work or they might not have enough money at times to be able to pay off their monthly total. Netflix will be able to pick up and decide on their pricing to benefit all as it will be accurate. While if it was only one group it won’t be accurate information.

The last thing that I would recommend Netflix to improve the validity of their market research is to provide the customers with questions which are easy to understand and to answer that don’t take up a lot of time to ensure that questionnaire answers are not ambiguous. Expansion of their product and market is one of Netflix’s plan, so if they are looking to expand their product with new features it would require carrying out more research in order to find out more about the customers’ needs. For me I would suggest to Netflix that they use short and straight to the point questions, because the long questions will be hard to understand at tomes and possibly confusing. I would therefore suggest that they use a closed ended questionnaire which does not involve a lot of writing and will be time saving for all.

All of the above are suggestions to improve the validity of Netflix’s market research. However Netflix should make sure that the questions that they use will match their research in order to ensure that all the information they collect contributes towards their marketing plan. Recommendations that were made above will be to improve validity of the research and the accuracy of the information. This will help them to make the right decision based on what they do with the research.