TiVo's problem rests in its inability to convince consumers to change their television consumption habits. Improper targeting and positioning have led to an ineffective product, price-point and promotion strategy that has stranded TiVo in the chasm between the early market and the early majority. TiVo is a truly discontinuous innovation, a product that requires consumers to dramatically change their past behavior with the promise of gaining equally dramatic new benefits. TiVo's main challenge is convincing the consumer to buy an expensive product in a new product category. While the Early Market, categorized by visionaries and technology enthusiasts, is adopting the product, TiVo has had little success convincing the Early Majority segment, also referred to as pragmatists, that the risk of change is worth the reward of their groundbreaking technology. This is evidenced by TiVo's current overall market penetration level of .04% and lackluster future projections. Visionaries are not a good reference for pragmatists because of their belief in evolution rather than revolution: . There are two things that TiVo can do to convince the Early Majority to buy. First, they need to secure a market leadership position. When pragmatists do decide to adopt a new discontinuous innovation, they purchase from the market leader. As the market leader, everyone else in the market adapts their products to work with the leader's product. In addition, the market leader attracts third party companies who make aftermarket products, even if the leader is not responsive. Second, TiVo can position their product to a target market that values the product as a 100% solution to their problem what is typically called the whole product. Determining the right target segment requires an analysis of the customer, company and competition (fig. 2). TiVo's customer is defined by unmet needs in the market. While TV is one of the most ensconced and ritualistic elements of contemporary American life, there are still aspects of television viewing that do not fulfill customer needs. An estimated 68% of Americans complained that they felt "widowed" by their loved one during the Fall television season because their spouses were chained to their televisions during primetime from 8pm to 11pm. Additionally, parents expressed a difficult time getting their children to do homework during key television programming times. In general, this is evidence that consumers want greater control over their television consumption habits. Analysis of the TiVo Corporation reveals their core competencies, which include proprietary software, national distribution through established retail outlets such as Best Buy, Circuit City and Sears and product co-branding with trusted electronics giants Philips and Sony.
The data compiled by the Nielsen Media Research is essential to TV programming across the United States and in Canada. It monitors television ratings and estimates audience sizes by providing the highest quality of accuracy, allowing the television marketplace to function effectively. This information provides programmers and commercial advertisers with the awareness of people’s viewing habits. Depending on air times and the popularity of certain shows, the station calculates the advertising fees that generate a majority of its revenue.
The first excuse is economics. The business of TV is ruled by a simple declaration: Get the audience the advertisers want. The consequence is that major networks forgo the mass ...
The market penetration of TiVo has been very poor. Fourteen months after its introduction only 0.04% penetration has been achieved out of the total of 102million TV watching population. This is also reflected in the poor revenue position of the company. Exhibit 3 shows that the company recorded a loss every quarter since the introduction of the product in September 1999 and has been getting worse.
With a near total saturation of the consumer electronics market, companies need to look beyond their boundaries and add value to their offerings, and sometimes it means total reinvention of the company.
TiVo has diversified itself in the industry by promoting their system as user friendly and innovated features such as viewing digital photo's wirelessly from a P.C and even a suggestion engine that selects consumer preferences. Marketing seems to be the best competence TiVo has thus far. These unique marketing techniques have made TiVo the most well known DVR and set the standard in the market. Many consumers acknowledge DVR's as TiVo's.
In this case study we will gain a better understanding of TiVo, Inc. and how it has struggled to find success in a market they are known to be the innovator. At this point there are very few television viewers in North American that do not know what TiVo does for TV viewing. However, most consumers do not know the history or struggles this company has been through since creating the product in the late 1990’s. After reading this case study it is clear the creators of the TiVo were visionaries but it is also clear they were not business people too. Sadly, this might be the eventual demise of the company that clearly had the market in the palm of their hand. We will examine some of their flaws and how TiVo might regain some of the momentum to become a profitable organization.
When creating a marketing mix for a product, the company needs to look at the 4Ps: product, place, price and promotion (Eugene McCarthy, 1960). “When considering the 4 P’s of the GoPro, it is clear that the company’s success has been due in large to such great marketing.” (Suki Chan, 2013)[1].
The article, “Keeping Up with the Trumps,” discusses how television and the amount of television a person watches, affects a person’s spending habits. I was not surprised at all to find out that there is a correlation between a person’s spending and the amount of television they watch. Because many Americans are always wanting the nicest and best new things, it is easy to fall for product placements in movies and shows, and it is easy to see commercials and want to imminently go out and buy the products the commercials are selling. This is because, today we label people based on what they own, so people feel included to spend to keep up with the in crowd. A thought that cross my mind while reading this article, is how things might have changed in recent years, now that many families own DVRs. Now when people tune in to watch shows and movies, they can record them ahead of time and skip commercials. I would be curious to see how the results would change if this study was redone
Streaming video content over the internet continues to grow in popularity with consumers for a variety of reasons, including the widespread availability of high speed internet, attractive video content, easy to use video streaming devices and the rising cost of cable television service. Some consumers use streaming video to enhance or supplement the typical offerings available from their local cable provider. Others take a more extreme approach and use streaming video as a means to eliminate the need for a cable television subscription altogether. Presently consumers cancelling their cable TV subscriptions are still considered a minority of all subscribers; nevertheless their steadily increasing numbers have earned the moniker of “cord cutters.” Those looking to ditch cable TV can also find a growing number of online resources that will ease their transition to cheaper online television viewing.
The outlook for Netflix has developed a trend of continuous growth with subscribers and providing products with a substantial cost advantage by distributing a wide variety of titles that appeal to different customer groups (Anthony, 2005). The success of Netflix was simply listening to consumer’s feedback regard...
In this world, creating a new product, as good as it may be, is not enough. The success of any product, in this day and age, depends grandly on the way it is presented to the market. Marketing is responsible in assuring a successful launch of a product, new or reinvented, and to assure its sustainability in this competitive world. For those reasons, billions of dollars are spent each year on tools and strategies to improve marketing research and predict the success of a product: many marketing firms form focus groups, do trials and conduct many tests just to end up with a fairly high percentage of failures.
Nevertheless, one of the most important constants among all of us, regardless of our differences, is that, above all, we are buyers. We use or consume on a regular basis food, clothing, shelter, transportation, education, equipment, vacations, necessities, luxuries, services, and even ideas. As consumers, we play an essential role in the health of the economy; local, national and international. The purchase decision we make affect the requirement for basic raw materials, for transportation, for production, for banking; they affect the employment of employees and the growth of resources, the successfulness of some industries and the failure of others. In order to be successful in any business and specifically in today’s dynamic and rapidly evolving marketplace, marketers need to know everything they can about consumers; what they are want, what they are think, how they are work, how they are spend their leisure time. They have to find out the personal and group influences that affect consumer decisions and how these decisions are made. In these days of ever-widening media choices, they need to not only identify their target audiences, but they have to know where and how to reach
This have create so much ease for the access of information and entertainment. The use of the Internet have constantly increase the amount of user capability to multitasking, as of September 2009 there have been up to an increment of 30% in the US (Gali Einav, 2010). With technology as a rapidly growing trend, consumers find it relatively a necessity to own a smart phone. Having to view the news without the interference of having to wait through commercial or advertisement, the internet has created a passive platform for advertisement to be display passively. With the Internet supporting throughout multiple kind of device’s platform, the hassle of viewing the news will not be an issue for any consumers as long as they are logged on. This has caused a great deal towards the mainstream media, by creating participating communities around the media events. Consumers may choose to desert and choose the Internet as a substitution of traditional news media with the assumption of users being a more active consumer, rather than passive (Scott L. Althaus & David Tewksbury,
In the business market, the main and principal key to get profit is by the active consume of a product in the marketplace. Nevertheless, firms have taken advantage of that and have created false needs to consumers. According to Leiss, “The only true need, it would appear, are for nourishment, clothing, and housing.” In other words, he states that people can live without television, internet, IPod, and so forth. But the impact of commercials have made people feel the necessity of something else than food and shelter.
We can’t assume consumers will remain loyal if we don’t adapt and learn and you can’t assume brand strength alone will keep them or attract new consumers. The market will change and new will enter the market. I realized that the 5 D’s (Discovering, Defining, Developing, Doing, and Directing) in the marketing process is a continuous, an ongoing evaluation of the market conditions and the continued adaption. For Digital Channels, that means we must have the best feature rich products and service that our customers value. We can’t assume they will stay with us because they have for years. The moment a company becomes complacent, they become