Marvel Entertainment Universe

 In the last blog we discussed the background and history of Marvel studios, in this blog we are going to do a SWOT analysis of the cinematic giant.

Strengths 

Marvel Entertainment is a geographically diverse company, operating successfully domestically and internationally. The company runs a diversified business mainly from its three divisions of Publishing which publishes, markets and sells comic books and novels about various Marvel characters. In addition to publishing over 4000 Marvel books and magazines in 30 languages for the next generation of fans, Marvel Comics are now being added to e-book service Scribd, along with Amazon owned Comixology, to include Young Adult and Middle Grade novels based on Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy and Spiderman franchises as well as kids and family friendly apps. Licensing provides rights to movies, production companies, producers of video games (like Activision, Nintendo and Sony) and also the rights to manufacturers of various types of merchandise Marvel owns allowing the use of its character, as well as overseeing how the characters are used. Movie Production segment was started to produce films in house which would allow Marvel to retain revenues increasing their bottom line. Marvel Studios produced Iron Man in 2008, it earned over $585 million for a worldwide gross, although being its first movie to be made. The Studio had a gigantic support of its Comic Fans which is evident even now after Avenger’s Endgame became the top grossing movie of all time.

Weaknesses

Marvel’s main focus is to dominate the cartoons and comics market which can be seen as a weakness because of their limited market. Their target audience mainly consists of boys in their teens ad tweens which makes them dependent in that specific region for success. Their products will depend on how that specific market responds and their attachment to those products. Here, Power of the Customer is higher. Their merchandise is limited to action figures, not to shirts, keychains etc. These products can be sold as fake by non-marvel shops using their logo and name which can affect their assurance of quality if they are not copyright struck.

Marvel Entertainment Universe

 

Background And History

Marvel comics was founded in the year 1939, by Martin Goodman, who was famous for being the founder of Pulp Magazine. His initial two creations were The Human Torch (not to be confused with Johnny Storm of Fantastic Four, he is his reinvention) and Sub-Mariner under the name Timely Comics. This company was created to let people fantasize over ideal and superhuman nature of scientific and fantasy based characters and to have its share in the growing market and industry of superheroes characters and novels.

Golden Era

A breakthrough character was made in 1941 called Captain America, during the 1940s (known as The Golden Age of Timely Comics), portraying him as a fighting American soldier fighting the Nazi and Japanese soldiers even before America went into the WW2. It was only a decade after the Golden Age that the company went out of business because people lost interest in superheroes. After that the company Timely Comics changed its name to Atlas Magazine. Atlas’s output was mostly in other genres such as humor, western horror, science fiction and war .

Post Golden-Era Period

 In 1956, Atlas Magazine’s rival company in comics came into being, The DC Entertainment Universe (Detective Comics) which to this date are in competition. In 1960s, Atlas Magazines changed its name to Marvel Comics. For several decades, Marvel and DC were in competition until 1996 in which Marvel Comics went into bankruptcy. The company came out of bankruptcy in 1998 by making different marketing strategies by targeting certain demographic areas and expanding its cinematic universe under Marvel Studios banner. In 2009, Walt Disney Company purchased the parent company of Marvel.

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