HR6004: Critical Analysis of Netflix's Business Operations Report

This report provides a critical analysis of Netflix, examining its business context as a multinational streaming service provider. It explores project questions concerning the company's challenges, including market saturation, global expansion difficulties, and increasing content costs. The research methodology involves primary data collection through interviews and secondary data analysis using journals and articles. The report also addresses ethical issues related to social media's impact on viewers, video quality disparities, and the potential loss of subscriber trust. A research timeline is outlined using a Gantt chart. The report concludes with the identification of professional and career development skills gained through the project, including critical thinking, analytical skills, and project management. References are provided to support the analysis.

Running head: CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF NETFLIX
CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF NETFLIX
Name of the student:
Name of the student:
Author note:

1CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF NETFLIX
Table of Contents
Report Title:.....................................................................................................................................2
Business Context.............................................................................................................................2
Project Questions:............................................................................................................................2
Current/ preliminary research:.........................................................................................................3
Method of Inquiry:...........................................................................................................................3
Ethical issues:..................................................................................................................................4
Planning (Research timeline):..........................................................................................................5
Professional and career development skills:....................................................................................6
References:......................................................................................................................................7

2CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF NETFLIX
Report Title:
Critical analysis of the working operations of Netflix.
Business Context
Netflix is an American multinational company that that mainly does business by proving
online streaming services of for movies and television shows. Reed Hastings founded it in 1997,
users can access a wide range of online movies, and television shows form the library hosted by
Netflix (Jenner 2016). Although the company has seen huge success in the recent past, there are
different areas of improvements as well as many challenges faced by the company that has to be
further researched. This can ensure that the company is well prepared for the ever-changing
market in the future. Research has been done in the past regarding the different kinds of issues
faced by the video streaming companies in the past and also extensive study has been done on
companies such as Amazon prime which is one of the major competitors of Netflix.
Project Questions:
1. Why is it interesting to research on the issues faced by Netflix?
It is interesting to research on Netflix since not much of research has been carried
out in the past regarding the role of Netflix as a social media platform and there are
different aspects that can be covered in the study.
2. What will be identified through the literature review of the issues faced by Netflix?
The literature review will help the reader to identify how Netflix has changed the
lives of its viewers and how it has played an important role in socially by adversely
affecting the mentality of the people. The literature will explain how the organization has

3CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF NETFLIX
been able to generate immense business by promoting itself in the social media by
considering its advantages as well as disadvantages.
3. What will be the outcome of the project?
The project outcome will be a thorough understanding of the effect of social
networking and how Netflix has used it to its optimum advantage and how the negative
impacts can be reduced. Recommendations will be provided at the end of the project.
Current/ preliminary research:
The preliminary research has showed that even though the company has seen enormous
success in the recent past there are three major challenges that has to be further researched on, in
order to understand how the company can shield its place in the global markets in the future.
Some of the identified challenges faced by the company are that the US market are now saturated
with Netflix subscribers. There are more than 47 million subscriber already in the markets
(Elovici et al. 2014). It has also been found that expanding into the new markets globally will not
be a very easy task for Netflix because of the existence of the preexisting stiff completion of the
other video service providers. In addition, the price of the media deals and content costs are
increasing with every passing days that makes it even difficult for Netflix to acquire other third
party media companies. With the increasing price of copyrighted contents form the other media
companies as well as television channels.
Method of Inquiry:
Primary data sources will be used which will make use of the data collected form an
interview with an employee form Netfix regarding the exact nature of issues faced by the
organization. There will be secondary data sources that will also be used such as authentic as

4CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF NETFLIX
well as credible journals and articles by renowned researchers of the past who have done
preliminary or extensive research about this topic. This in turn help to understand which areas or
working departments within Netflix should be addressed presently.
Surveys will be conducted and the data retrieved will be analyzed and converted into
numerical values, which can be shown using graphs as well as pictorial description. Qualitative
data analysis will be carried out using the data from the interview with the Netflix employee. All
the data that will be collected from the different sources will be used in order to understand the
issues faced by the organization and accordingly recommendations for future development.
Surveys will be considered for the Netflix subscribers in order to understand their concerns and
companies that they face regarding the experience of using Netflix services (Tuten and Solomon
2017). A sample size of 2000 will be used in the initial phase of the survey and depending upon
the response the sample size can be later increased or decreased.
Ethical issues:
There are different kinds of ethical issues in understanding and addressing the issues
faced within Netflix in the environment f social media. All these ethical issues will be address in
the research. For instance, there are advertisements of the television shows and movies that are
being broadcasted by Netflix. There are trailers that are available in the online social network
sites and children often get addicted to such trailers and the updates in the social sites. Most of
the children in the United States have been seen busy with their smart phones or computers
watching and sharing these trailers on the social networking platform with their friends. This in
turn has adverse social as well as psychological issues for the children and they tend to be more
carried away in social networking and sharing Netflix updates with their friends. This causes
distraction from a healthy life, loss of concentration in studies etc.

5CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF NETFLIX
There are other ethical issues such as disparity I video quality for different users who use
different kinds of internet connections irrespective of the fact that they pay the same subscription
fees. For example a user who pays X amount of money but uses mobile internet to access the
online Netflix services will get a video quality that is not as good for anther user who pays the
same X amount of money but uses a faster Wi-Fi connection to watch the videos (Carr and
Hayes 2015). This is Netflix’s unethical way of earning more revenue by utilizing the same
bandwidth and resource, in which the consumers have to suffer (Lu et al. 2013). They do not get
to enjoy the full HD experience of watching videos but they end up paying for the subscription.
In this way they have a threat of losing the faith of its subscribers and eventually they may end
up losing much of its subscribers in the future.
Planning (Research timeline):
Activities as planned
Wee
k(1-3) Week
(4-10)
Week
(11-13)
Week
(14-17)
Week
(18-21)
Week
(22-23)
Week
(24)
Selection of topic 
Secondary sources
data collection
 
Creation of layout 
Literature review   
Analysis and
interpretation for the
collected data
  
Findings from the data  

6CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF NETFLIX
Conclusions 
Formation of draft  
Project output
delivery

Figure: Gantt chart (Source: Created by author)
Professional and career development skills:
From this project, the complete understanding of the working of the Netfilx operations
and the issues faced by the media industry can be understood in details. The reader will be able
to understand the ethical considerations that should be untaken in the professional fields and the
adverse effects caused by their decision-making processes (Dijck 2013). Most importantly, this
project will help in developing critical thinking as well as analytical skills and get to know the
steps and processes involved in a task that needs efficient project management skills (Onando
and Mwangi 2014). The reader will also be able to develop leadership qualities and how to
ensure optimum job satisfaction within the teammates working together in a particular project
(Rimock 2013). The reader will also gain knowledge and ideas about how to frame a career in
the media industry in companies like Netflix that provide online video streaming services and
what are the pre requisites for such a career.

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References:
Carr, C.T. and Hayes, R.A., 2015. Social media: Defining, developing, and divining. Atlantic
Journal of Communication, 23(1), pp.46-65.
Elovici, Y., Fire, M., Herzberg, A. and Shulman, H., 2014. Ethical considerations when
employing fake identities in online social networks for research. Science and engineering
ethics, 20(4), pp.1027-1043.
Jenner, M., 2016. Is this TVIV? On Netflix, TVIII and binge-watching. New media &
society, 18(2), pp.257-273.
Lu, Q., Zhu, L., Bass, L., Xu, X., Li, Z. and Wada, H., 2013, June. Cloud API issues: an
empirical study and impact. In Proceedings of the 9th international ACM Sigsoft conference on
Quality of software architectures (pp. 23-32). ACM.
Onando, M.I. and Mwangi, W., 2014. Temporal Absence in Recommendations: a survey of
Temporal Patterns in Netflix Prize Data. International Journal of Computer Science Issues
(IJCSI), 11(4), p.92.
Rimock, M., 2013. Regulatory issues concerning new media alternatives to television. Canadian
Journal of Law and Technology, 11(2).
Tuten, T.L. and Solomon, M.R., 2017. Social media marketing. Sage.
Van Dijck, J., 2013. The culture of connectivity: A critical history of social media. Oxford
University Press.