GoPro Case Study Analysis: Entrepreneurship, Marketing & Challenges

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the GoPro case study, examining the entrepreneurial journey of Nick Woodman and the company's strategic decisions. The report delves into the 'dark side' of entrepreneurship, identifying emotional, physical, and economic challenges faced by entrepreneurs. It analyzes GoPro's marketing strategies, particularly its niche marketing approach and its ability to compete with larger companies like Sony. A SWOT analysis is conducted to evaluate GoPro's strengths and weaknesses. The report also discusses potential challenges, such as compatibility issues with telecast mediums and competition from smartphones. The case study highlights GoPro's marketing innovations, including focusing on product quality and creating a niche segment. It also explores the company's strategic planning, financial strategies, and the founder's approach to overcoming challenges and adapting to market changes. The report concludes with an evaluation of the company's future prospects.

Running head: GOPRO ENTREPRENEURSHIP
GOPRO ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Name of Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Part A
Response to Question 1 (Entrepreneurship)
Introduction
Entrepreneurship is the act of starting up own business with the objective of earning
profits while taking up various risks (Kuratko 2016). It involves designing a plan, starting the
business and carrying out the operations individually to earn profits. It is however not so easy
to carry on the operations of the business as the entrepreneur has to deal with various
problems while carrying out the business. The owner of the go pro company delayed his
plans for four years for these reasons (McCann and Ortega-Argilés 2016). These four years
were the toughest years for his life because of three factors; these factors can be termed as the
dark side of being an entrepreneur. This study will focus on answering various questions of
the case study of the company Go pro.
The dark side of being an Entrepreneur
Factor 1: The emotional and physical toxins created by constant pressure and stress:
Clinical studies have presented evidence that the community of the entrepreneur often
fall for the trap of stress and this stress gives rise to many negative biological and
psychological conditions (Wolf 2016). The major reasons for stress of an entrepreneur is that
they may not be having sufficient funds to carry out their operations , they have to
continuously carry out promotional activities in order to attract their clients because they
have just started, they find it difficult to retain the talented people in the company. Since
these people have just started the business so they find it difficult to carry out various
activities. The people have to face huge amount of mental strain due to the entire
responsibility of the organization and the people.

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Factor 2: Isolation from the fraternity and economic crisis because of the idling period:
Bill Gates, Thomas Elva Edison, and Leonardo Da Vinci belongs to different eras
however, they felt the same pang of economic crisis because the world was not ready to
accept their ideas. As an entrepreneur, it is the toughest time or the darkest period right before
the arrival of the limelight and success (Morgan, 2015). Even Nick Woodman faced the
problems of economic crisis as he wanted to build a camera that was wear and tear free but
for doing that he needed funds. His parents did not support his passion for surfing but he was
passionate to do that and that is where he developed the ideas of group cameras.
Factor 3: Middle age crisis and point of no return:
Scientist Nicolai Tesla promoted the concept of electromagnetic waves, however,
during that period technology was not smart enough to accommodate his ideas. He lived a life
of misery and died in poverty (Morgan and Sisak 2016). Nick woodman was afraid that his
idea would fail and he decided to drop the idea and join workfare so that he can give some
time to the idea.
In the present world, right from the mobile phone to satellite communication,
everything is taking the support of the same concept. An absolute failure of an idea can ruin
the life of an entrepreneur. They should know the exit point if they are not succeeding.
Question 2
The case study of Go Pro completely denies the teaching of the “Peter Drucker." Nick
Goodman never attended any college. There are five pieces of evidence in this success story
that tells us about the right timing of the Nick, for instance, Nick Promoted Go pro as a
Cinema Grade point of view camera. The truth is this that in the present time's everybody is

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seeking for HD grade cameras that can be telecasted on internet. Nick's intentions were
something else; however, the market received it in a different vein.
We cannot study entrepreneurship in colleges and other places because they promote
out of the box ideas. We can also understand this fact with the help of big data facilities. If
the processing of the data can create an entrepreneur then big data facilities have all the good
reasons to rule the future markets (Donnelly, 2018). Woodman became an entrepreneur after
continuous act and learns activities. He decided to carry out surf trip through Australia and
Indonesia. Top record the perfect wave, he tied his Kodak camera to his wrist using a rubber
band. He needed a durable camera for this purpose but he did not gave that. That gave
Woodman the idea to start gopro for the surfers. He started designing his prototypes in his
bedroom after breaking all connection with his families and friends (Gopro.com. 2019). He
was armed with his drill machine and his mother’s sewing machine to create the strap for
holding the camera. He was motivated to succeed because he did not want to fail again. And
it was then he decided that he was going to start a company for the surfers. He learnt this
discipline by continuously practising a and carrying out the trial and error methods. The only
difference between him and anyone else was that he was a risk-taker and he used to learn
from his failures. He took his failures positively and he had this attitude since his childhood
as pointed out by his teachers that he was always thinking of something. Therefore it has
been rightly said by Peter Drucker that just like any other discipline entrepreneurship is also
learnt provided person has that zeal fir learning.
Part B
Question 3
Marketing and strategic planning

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When we have a look at the marketing innovations and initiatives of the Go Pro, in
context with the present day strategies of the rivals like Sony and others, we find that Go-Pro
focused more on the inherent quality of the product, which was the grip of the product, they
came up with a line of variants to support various types of surfaces and grips. The other
companies like Sony tried to add features in their camera. This variation created a niche
segment for Go-Pro products. When we do a SWOT analysis, we find that the biggest
strength of Go-Pro is associated with its sturdy grip designed for adventure activities and
heavy duty stuff. Rest of the players are focusing more on picture quality and softer aspects.
This distinction is working well for the company because the demand for these products is
always on a rise and Go-Pro has a loyal customer base. The company has been able to attract
and gain market share and beat other big companies such as Sony due to the niche marketing
strategy that it uses that is focused on meeting the need of the tech savvy era of children and
adults. These days whenever there is any for of activity such as scuba diving, mountains
climbing or any other activity it is common to find a gopro. These days the present generation
does not create a video for everything rather they go pro it. That is the present generations
they strap the cameras with their helmets such that and go for surfing or other activities. The
effect that these cameras provide such as cinema quality paranomic footage of the events.
These help to convert the normal mortals into highlight reels for the human’s without being
to expensive as compared to other brands. There are various such instances that show that
gopro has actually occupied the market. Shaun White, went go pro during his winter X games
instead of using the old cameras. Various Hollywood directors are there who keep crates of
these go pro on their shooting location. Rolling stage has used this on stage. NFL have also
tested these in their areas. It is being used in the training activities of various police forces of
the US. Nick woodman himself used it to create a footage of child’s delivery and it has also
been used by his crew for various reasons. The affordability and the niche marketing

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techniques have made the company successful till now (Dalgic and Leeuw 2015). The
company’s sakes has been continuously increasing since the debut of the first cameras and
the profitability had reached about 100million dollars only for the month of January and in
December they became the highest selling brand defeating Sony. The company also provides
pocket cam-coders that are used by all.
This strategy of niche marketing and continuous growth have made team a successful
brand and it is acting as a competitive adavantage for the company ant that is why it is being
able to deafer other competitors such as Sony. Another marketing strategy that is used by
GoPro is that though the owner is not having a Facebook and twitter account he makes sure
that sufficient advertisement strategies are carried out properly (Tuten and Solomon 2017).
He spends about millions of dollars to get their brand name hashtagged with a few blood
pumping shots. These are focused at creating a brand that the customers find exciting and
engaging. The company has got millions of views in YouTube and millions of likes in
Facebook.
Question 4
Compatibility with the telecast mediums and image processing software is an area
where Go-Pro may fail. Most of the players in the market of Camera are now developing a
complete suite where an individual can process a film or a video clip in an end to end fashion.
Go pro is lagging behind in this area because they are not developing ancillary technologies
to support their main offering. This is creating a gap between customer expectations and the
offerings of the product. Ideally, Go-Pro should try to develop a support system for their
products, Kodak once faced the same problem, in order to negate this problem they went for
above the line operations and along with the camera they started producing the raw materials
for the camera and came up with printing presses to develop the final products.

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Many people are of the view that GoPro will not be able to stay in the market for long
because of continuous technological innovations taking place. Smartphones that with higher
mega-pixel facilities are now being provided by various companies to this market (Chang et
al. 2015). Most of the smartphones are now challenging the need for camcorders like the flip
camera and therefore they may result in replacing the GoPrpo Company. The main problems
if that company is that they are a hardware company that is moving into a world of uber
platforms. There are thousands of developers developing the software of the smartphones
especially iPhone and others. There are various challenges from other companies as well.
Sony has introduced and shipped in Septembers special action cameras and is trying to
positions itself at a higher position than GoPro. The company will be providing features of
stereo sounds and stabilization of image and this feature is not being provided by GoPro. The
company ids challenging the GoPro as have been stated by them that they are a core camera
making company whereas GoPro is mount company that is being carried out with the use of
camera. Therefore these differences can be used by the competitors to strategically improve
their core business and push the GOpRo Company out of the market.
The main objective of the founder of GoPro was to make GoPro a device that first
comes to the minds of the people when they decide about capturing some memory. The
Gopro company has decided to overcome these challenges through entering into various deals
with people. The company has enter into a deal with Foxconn that helped in getting an
investment of about 200 million dollars into the company. The company is also thinking
about gathering public deposits being a public company as these funds may be used by them
for the purpose of carrying out some technological advancement. A big step has been taken
by the company by entering into contracts with the and deals with various company’s. The
company’s trajectory will remain the same until it finds new ways for innovating the same.
The company is aiming to become the standard of its image capture.

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References
Chang, W.H. and Liu, C.Y., Flexiworld Tech Inc, 2015. Smart phones that include a digital
camera, a touch sensitive screen, support for voice activated commands, and support
to at least part of a protocol within IEEE 802.11 standards. U.S. Patent 9,092,177.
Dalgic, T. and Leeuw, M., 2015. Niche marketing revisited: theoretical and practical issues.
In Proceedings of the 1993 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual
Conference(pp. 137-145). Springer, Cham.
Donnelly, C. (2018). Digital loyalty card ‘big data’ and small business marketing: Formal
versus informal or complementary? International Small Business Journal , (Online)
Available At: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0266242613502691.
(Accessed 20-5-19)
Gopro.com. (2019). About us. [online] Available at: https://gopro.com/about-us [Accessed 20
May 2019].
Kuratko, D.F., 2016. Entrepreneurship: Theory, process, and practice. Cengage Learning.
McCann, P. and Ortega-Argilés, R., 2016. Smart specialisation, entrepreneurship and SMEs:
issues and challenges for a results-oriented EU regional policy. Small Business
Economics, 46(4), pp.537-552.
Morgan, J. and Sisak, D., 2016. Aspiring to succeed: A model of entrepreneurship and fear of
failure. Journal of Business Venturing, 31(1), pp.1-21.

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Morgan, T. (2015). The dark side of the entrepreneurial orientation and market orientation
interplay: A new product development perspective. International Small Business
journal ,(Online) Available at :
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0266242614521054.(Accessed 20-5-19)
Tuten, T.L. and Solomon, M.R., 2017. Social media marketing. Sage.
Wolf, I., 2016. Exploring the Stress and Coping Experiences of Early-Stage Entrepreneurs
during the Venture Creation Process (Master's thesis, University of Twente).