The History of Netflix

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Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix headquartered in Los Gatos, CA, began the company’s operations in 1997 after receiving an enormous late charge from a movie rental he returned long overdue. However, Hastings had the desire to be different than traditional movie outlets; whereas, customers had to drive to the location, pay a certain amount for each movie they rented, and were given a deadline in which to return the movie. Instead of using a method established by other video markets “to attract customers to a retail location, Netflix offered home delivery of DVDs through the mail” which eventually led to a booming business towards streaming forms of entertainment (Shih, Kaufman, & Spinola, 2009, p. 3). Today, Netflix exists along with several competitors; however, offers the most streaming content available for viewing, and continues to grow its subscriber base both domestically and globally. Although, direct and indirect competitors, acquisition costs, and several barriers present a financial threat for Netflix, the company has managed to grow with the acclamation of partnerships, expand to international territories, and vastly increase its price in shares of stock.
The History of Netflix
Although Hastings vowed to be divergent from other video retailers, his goal was to use an identical pricing strategy; however, one that would “appeal to customers [. . .] who used online shopping as an alternative to traveling to retail outlets” due to ease of access and more preferences (Shih, Kaufman, & Spinola, 2009, p. 3). Furthermore, Netflix launched its business at a time DVDs had barely hit the marketplace as the firm anticipated the new technology to be a promising venture. Nonetheless, within a year DVD players became so vast...

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