Tivo - Case Writeup Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Tivo - Case Writeup - Essay Example Before the launch of TiVo, television viewing was more of a passive activity, with top programs vying for the prime time slot, season premieres drawing in huge audiences and advertisers trying to gain advantage of such high viewership by grabbing prime time space. The presence of a large TV viewing audience, the habits of audiences, popularity of television as an integral part of entertainment as evident from the data showing trends in purchase of TV, and the added ease of watching one’s favorite shows, in itself presented the required business opportunity to launch the new concept in the market. During the initial execution phase of the product, several factors were observed that played a major role in assessing various elements of its business model. The product’s price was estimated to be quite high which was apparently more expensive than most TV sets. Besides, lack of awareness proved to be a setback in reaching the target markets which made marketing and sale of t he product even more challenging since unlike other products in that category, TiVo required extensive explanations for its various features. Moreover, the advertisers showed concern over one of its features that allowed the viewers to forward advertisements. These factors guided the company to frame better policies and terms that would be beneficial to both the parties concerned. TiVo had a huge subscriber base comprising of 42000 subscribers, just fourteen months after its launch, with a strong and impressive current rate of 14,000 new subscribers per quarter. It had strategic partnerships with superstar brands – Sony and Phillips and subsidized them to manufacture, distribute and promote the black box to the retailers. Apart from the revenues from advertisers and subscribers, the other major source of revenue was through the sale of hardware. In order to penetrate the 102 million TV viewing households market in the U.S.,