Question

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This report is primarily intended to analyze and present the potential financial success and profitability of Zivago Private Limited, an online media portal which is proposed to be launched in the local market in Singapore. The content of the report mainly highlights the following points: A brief description of the services to be provided by the company, identification of the target consumer group, the proposed marketing and advertising strategies based on an overall market research covering the prominent global and local competitors and the potential revenue model that will be implemented following the same.

Zivago has been conceived to be a comprehensive online medial portal where viewers can watch their favourite commercial shows, movies, documentaries, live features covering a wide range of categories such as drama, comedy, suspense/myestery, sports, news and journalism and much more. Aside from the popular local shows and movies, the portal also contains various programmes from almost over 25 countries in different languages and substitles. Additionally, Zivago also features original shows in all these languages that are produced exclusively by Zivago and presenting popular actors/actresses from the local media insustry.

Based on a private and other government conducted market and consumer studies in Singapore, it has been estimated that more than half of the consumers in the media industry is increasingly preferring online videos and private streaming. In this regard, viewership is not only limited to only popular local shows but majorly include foreign ones as well. However, in this regard, only few portals have been able to access the international entertainment arena and although few have, they are not able to cater to the ethnically diversed population group in the country which includes native Chinese Singaporean, Malay, Bangaladeshi, Indian and various Middle Eastern. As an example, VIU an Starhubs predominantly feature some of the popular Japanese and Chinese drama based shows but not much services considering the diversed population group. The main impediments in this case are lack of penetration into the international media market and language barrier. Zivago is intended to address both the issues and in the process generate higher viewership.

Secondly, the studies indicate that the OTT viewership in Singapore has steadily increased among children and young adults and the most popular genres include drama, movies, sports, animation/cartoons and other entertainment and variety. In this context, Zivago specifically targets the children audiences and sports viewers by streaming various South Asian animation and cartoon shows and popular global sport events such as NFL,NBA,American Football etc. Such services are very much limited and expensive both by local and global competitors.

As internet and social media is gaining ever increasing prominence in Singapore, the company is looking to rely on digital marketing for marketing and promotional services. The studies reveal that Youtube, Facebook and Instagram users in Singapore are highest among the OTT viewers in Southeast Asia. Zivago mainly relies on online advertising and e-marketing through these social media and online platforms which features the most popular shows and promos and a brief description of the membership details. Zivago also conducts various promotional activities in local shopping malls and popular commercial centres across the city which will be featured at the official Facebook and Youtube page. A one minute promo of all the popular shows and movies will be displayed in the official Youtube page and Zivago online app which can be downloaded for free in both Playstore and IOS.

Zivago follows Subscription Revenue Model under E-commerce Revenue Model System. Unlike most other local and global counterparts including Zulu and Netflix, Zivago offers a free viewing of all its original shows for one week in the app as well in its Youtube and Facebook page, All the trailers and initial promos will also be available in app, Youtube and Facebook. The viewers can choose if they would like to continue watching further and subcribe.Under the subscription model, a free one month trial period is provided to potential viewers where they can watch unlimited shows (both original and local/global), movies and all other available contents. Following the expiration of the trial period, 3 subscription options will be provided based on monthly, 6 moths and yearly basis at reasonale pricing that are evidently less than some of the popular portals such as Netflix, VIU, HULU and Starhubs."

Using the report, answer the question mentioned below:

The Strategy: From your channel description, do the following:

Include at least THREE (3) traditional and new media strategies.
(i) Evaluate the possible risks of such a service. Explain how you can effectively mitigate these risks.

Answer 1

The possible risks to such a service are :-

Risk 1

A single user may take the subscription and multiple users would use the same ID and password, which would lead to a revenue loss for the company. One of the ways to mitigate such a risk would be to allow the user to use the service on a specific number of devices, for example, each user can view the content only from a phone and a laptop which would be verified each time the user logs in to view content. The devices can be uniquely identified using their MAC(Media Access Control ) ID which is unique for each device.

Risk 2.

The user could download the content from the website using various tools and post it on other channels leading to copyright infringement and loss of revenue as well.

The way to mitigate this would be to watermark each video on the website and keep various software checks in place to prevent download from the website.

Risk 3

Users might not continue using the service after the free period and might unsubscribe because of either price issue or maybe they are not happy with the catalogue provided by the company. This would lead to a sudden drop in the subscriber base.

One of the ways to mitigate this is to have an option where the user could request content if it is not available on the platform and view it within a few hours of requesting it. This would be a USP (Unique Selling Proposition)for the platform as it is not provided by the other service providers.