Dr. Granados Says Netflix's Year-End 2015 Performance Shows Timely Strategic Shift
In his latest Forbes blog post, Dr. Nelson Granados, Pepperdine Graziadio Business School Associate Professor of Information Systems, writes about Netflix's 4th quarter earnings report which showed that the company added 5.59 million streaming subscribers in Q4 2015 bringing its total world-wide customer base to nearly 75 million. While the company did not make its target for customer additions in the U.S., it had strong international growth, thanks in part to new original content with global appeal. Dr. Granados says that "with heavy competition domestically, and studios charging more for content, it is smart for Netflix to focus on international growth. And 2016 will be a big year for Netflix as it tries to enter the Chinese market. This international expansion strategy, coupled and supported with investments in original content that has global appeal, is a shift from its previous strategy to invest heavily in licensing content. And it may prove to be a really effective strategy, as Netflix seeks to differentiate from the myriad of emerging streaming services that have yet to make important inroads in international markets with original content."