Netflix’s Total Quality Management Practices and Strategies
Netflix is a popular subscription service streaming a large variety of award-winning TV movies and shows and documentaries on many internet devices connected worldwide, letting members watch (Netflix Help Centre). More films and Shows are added monthly, and there is continually something fresh to watch out. Its advantage is that you can enjoy an unlimited commercial-free view of the content offered ( Divyansh, Geeksmate). Netflix is also a creator of content providing exclusive Netflix original TV series such as ‘Master of None and Orange is the New Black’ only on their online platform (Digital initiative 2015). Although for you to access Netflix, you must subscribe monthly to a planned basic, standard, or premium.
Quality is of high importance to Netflix since it has an international brand to look after. Market competition has increasingly affected customer share of mind and time. Netflix has thus unveiled to be more flexible than foreign competitors such as Hulu and Amazon (Digital initiative 2015). It has benefitted numerously in international markets, but without adherence to quality, this gap could be closed by competition. Netflix observes that a strong commitment to excellence is the best way to attract the talent needed to scale them globally.
Similarly, it has been observed to pose a challenge when dealing with service model vendors (Nimdzi, 2017). Total Quality Management would add value to Netflix by analyzing the consequences of the cost of diverse choices, all through evaluating quality aspects. The best elements that Netflix could pay attention to are customer requests (Course Hero).
Netflix owns infrastructure systems that are complex, massive, and highly distributed, ensuring that no member can continuously check on the operations of all their status. To control this environment, Netflix has shifted from internal data centers to third party facilities, the company’s IT infrastructure located on Amazon’s cloud data centers. On the production environment, it has allocated ownership among its engineering teams ultimately responsible for the coding, testing, and resolving any problems relating to their work, which has resulted in more vigorous applications being built. Further, Netflix has invented tools to more efficiently identify, monitor, and resolve problems that arise on time. These tools, in turn, make Netflix improve and form a smooth user experience (Digital initiative 2015).
According to Lotz Amanda, Netflix has taken a ‘conglomerated niche’ strategy to develop programs for many different consumers’ interests. These comprise of complex serial dramas ‘House of Cards’, Action series ‘Daredevil,’ horror series ‘Hemlock Grove,’ etc. starring a famous actor called Adam Sandler. This is likely solely because internet allocation permits it to offer diverse consumers independently and at the same time.
For Netflix to be successful, it requires consistently support tens of millions of devices connected across the globe at any one time. Total Quality management is chief in realizing this goal because it identifies mainly the best aspects needed, especially the customers’ interests. Aside from the ‘conglomerated niche strategy’ suggested by Lotz Amanda, Penamatsa Varun, in his article, ‘strategic analysis of Netflix Inc. observes that the competitive, corporate, and global strategy are useful approaches for Netflix’s survival. He also states that it needs to focus on international markets, advance their media infrastructure, and user experience for it to continue progressing. Similarly, they should aim at original content development and less funding towards licensing content; and broaden the current platform to comprise diverse types of content becoming the best preferred online destination for consumers.
References
Course Hero, https://www.coursehero.com/file/p5tlp4h/TQM-would-benefit-Netflix-analyze-the-cost-consequences-of-different-choices/, ‘TQM would benefit Netflix to analyze the cost’ Accessed on July 1, 2020
Digital initiative, https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-rctom/submission/netflix-behind-the-scenes/, ‘Netflix behind the scenes’ (2015), Accessed on July 2, 2020
Lotz Amanda, https://theconversation.com/the-unique-strategy-netflix-deployed-to-reach-90-million-worldwide-subscribers-74885, ‘The Unique Strategy Netflix deployed to reach 90 million worldwide subscribers’ (2017) Accessed on July 1, 2020
Netflix Help Centre, https://help.netflix.com/en/node/412?ui_action=kb-article-popular-categories, ‘what is Netflix/’ Accessed on July 1, 2020
Nimdzi insights (2017), ‘How Netflix does it’ Research 10-11
Penamatsa Varun (2018), Netflix Inc. ‘A Strategic Analysis’ Analysis 12-15