Marvel Entertainment

Macro-Environment

 There are external factors that affect Marvel. Such factors are :

Economic Environment: In order to be cost effective, Marvel has to be up-to-date with technology, for example instead of printing hardcopy comics they should consider making it digital. Just like Amazon’s Kindle Fire has made reading books easier by reading it digitally on the tablet.

Actors sometimes require more than the previous amount in the sequels. If they aren’t paid enough, they leave the series and due to that in most cases the movie flops which causes a tremendous amount of loss to the production company. This happened in DC with Henry Cavil and Ben Affleck. Ironman’s first movie had the character Rhoades portrayed by a different actor and by another actor in the sequels but it was the company’s luck that RDJ held the series of Ironman together.

 

Legal Environment: Piracy and Content Theft is a major problem in Entertainment Industry. Marvel, as well as other companies have to make sure that their products aren’t being stolen or made into fake by local retail shops. They can make a legal lawsuit against those companies who are into piracy and content theft.

 

Socio-Cultural Environment: Entertainment Industry has targeted minorities and ethnicities whom don’t get much attention. Marvel has made characters from various backgrounds such as Africa, Russia and China. On the demand of people, Marvel made Captain Marvel a female for the movies while in fact the character is male in the comics.

 Marvel Entertainment

Micro-Environment (Porter’s Forces)

Customer’s  buying power is rated average or moderate when it comes to films and other entertainment sources. Movie Theatres are the buyers here and they have very low cost of switching towards movies that are better hit and due to that. Marvel’s customers have less brand loyalty due to less cost of switching but still, the buying power is moderate.

 

Supplier’s power is also moderate due to few certain reasons. Marvel is dependant on its suppliers for costumes, designers, makeup artists, camera companies etc. The better the quality of Marvel’s contractors, the better the film and the more the sales. But the demand of Marvel is also very high as a lot of companies would work with Marvel as contractors so the power of Suppliers is moderate too.

 

 

New Entrant’s threat is common for companies, even if they are in monopolistic environment or not. In this era of superheroes, it is safe to assume that new entrants can penetrate the market or old rivals can take over the market share. Marvel has been in competition with DC for decades now but there are other companies making its fair share in the entertainment industry, for example Hellboy which is made by Dark Horse and G.I. Joe which is made by Hasbro has made a very good impression on the geeks. With growing technology and new ways to create and show art, we can expect more companies to enter this industry and if Marvel doesn’t keep up with its game, they might get back the long queue of list of rising companies.

 

New Substitutes threat can be quite alarming for a company. Companies are looking ways to keep customer satisfaction and loyalty and don’t letting them slip into their substitutes hands. Marvel is trying to keep their prices as low as possible on merchandise, video games, comics and online paid movies and keeping their quality better so that they don’t get substituted by companies of their industry.

 Marvel Entertainment

Positioning

Marvel has been known for creating superheroes that everyone can fantasize over. First came the comics with hand drawn pictures of superheroes but it wasn’t enough for Marvel in order to compete with DC in overall comics, movies and games etc. Marvel has selected some of the best most accurate and familiar faces they could find for their movies and have built a relationship between them that seems like its going to last forever, exactly what Marvel is all about. Chris Evans as Captain America and Chris Hemsworth as Thor are the exact depictions of their respective characters as stated by Stan Lee. Marvel has really positioned itself in this respective area while in DC, Henry Cavil and Ben Affleck has left their roles as Superman and Batman. Marvel wins in this case of Bonds with their characters and customers, and the bond between the characters and the actors who plays them.

 In terms of movies, Marvel has been regarded better than DC in terms of use of CGI and Direction. Aquaman wasn’t critically acclaimed by critics due to bad CGI and costumes. For that, Marvel said that they would have done a better version of Aquaman than what DC did.

 Welcome back to my blogs and thank you for sticking around. In this new blog we will be talking about different tactics of Marvel Studios.

Targeting

Marvel has always targeted people in their teens and tweens. Adult Geeks of Marvel were fanboys in their Teens who have grown into current day adults.

Marvel has currently shown to be for every age. For example Ant-Man is Scott Lang, a dad who wants to be there for his daughter and be really kid friendly. Black Panther is of African origin, rooting in the history of Africa. Black Panther might be loved by Adults due to its storyline associated with colonialism. Captain America: The First Avenger is based in the time of WW2 which The Greatest Generation can enjoy and have nostalgia. Avengers Infinity War has action but comparatively have the most tragedy of all MCU films which can be a little extreme for kids in the middle school. Agents of Shield is a blend of Sci-Fi and Fantasy with Detective storyline which is viewable for all ages.

 

Differentiation

One of the major and most differentiating strategy that Marvel has is Promotional Strategies. Marvel would do anything to hype up their new film by posting video contents. Posting teasers, short clips, comic references, not one but two or three different trailers, GIFs and Vines etc. while DC lacks promoting in such kind. DC would post a trailer and a teaser which would only hype DC comic fanatics while audience who have no knowledge of comics would pass through the trailer or teaser.

Another Differentiating Strategy of Marvel is that unlike DC who use Social Media for letting their writers and content developers interact with DC Fanboys and have Q/A sessions to make their Fanboys their ambassadors for their films and comics, Marvel would use social media to increase their reach and engagement that they find to be most beneficial with their massive marketing effort to promote highly consumable parts of their content.

One is their bundle pricing strategy which seems to be comparatively less effective than DC’s low price strategy for a 22 page issue which is $3.99 for a single issue (approx. $6 for two issues by selling in bundle) against DC’s $2.99 per issue. DC owns this one.

 

Cinemator

In this new blog we are discussing the segmentation process of Marvel studios.

Segmentation

When it comes to segmentation, Marvel has made multiple targeting segments based on Psychographic, Demography and Geography.

Psychographic segmentation is where consumers are divided based on their interests, activities and opinions. Marvel targets people who are geeks and love spending time around their fellow geeks discussing and sharing their opinions on various superheroes. These people are Opinion Leaders who can influence others which can help Marvel in indirect advertising through these Opinion Leaders. Toys can be used as an excellent product for Psychographic Segmentation Marketing. From toys and cribs for babies to action figures for adults. Even collecting certain expensive action figure of Marvel can represent a certain kind of lifestyle for some people. Millennials and Gen-Y are the oldest customers of Marvel while a range of Gen-Z are also increasing in Marvel’s list of customers, collecting action figures to complete their collection or for different interests

Demographic segmentation is an approach of Marvel to appeal all different communities of different age, race, gender etc. After the release of Guardians Of The Galaxy movie, an animated show was made 1yr later for the kids and adult geeks. Captain Marvel was made into female in the movies so that girls and women can fantasize over a female superhero. Captain America being in the time of second World War to target Boomers or The Greatest Generation for nostalgic or relatable purposes. Marvel has proven itself to be for everyone, for ages and sexes. They even leaned towards comedy in Deadpool because comedy is enjoyed by everyone.

Geographic segmentation is another key segmentation for Marvel. Superheroes shown in the Marvel Universe are not only from America but all around the world. For example Agent Romanoff or Natalia Romanova A.K.A Black Widow is of Russian origin, Black Panther is from Africa, Wong from Doctor Strange is a Chinese Monk, Thor is from the Norse Mythology which was a Germanic Belief of people of Scandinavia before Christianity. Captain America and Iron-Man etc being from The USA.

 

Cinemator

In this blog we are going to talk about one of the strategies used by Marvel studios.

Price

It is the value that people get from the high quality products that Marvel and Disney produces. Back in in 1963, the first Spiderman comic, which was a 22 page chapter, was sold for 12 cents which makes 96 cents of this day. Can Marvel still make profit if they sell their comics for 96 cents? The answer is NO. They would not even do breakeven, they would certainly go into loss because of the rising cost of Raw Material and extensive distribution throughout the world. Nowadays, a single issue cost around $3.99 and $4.99 which is a decent amount considering they are price sticky. But they are trying to be more market penetrating by having a bundle pricing strategy by providing two comics instead of one at a reasonable price.

Since 2017, DC has been trying to penetrate market more successively by selling an issue around $2.99 to $3.99 and giving away a code which can be input into readdcentertainment.com so that the consumer can read the issue digitally in their respective platforms. This digital reading approach was dropped by Marvel while DC is still going on with it.  In movies, Iron Man had a budget of $140 million while making $585,366,247 ($585.4 million) which made it a box office success making it to 144^th rank worldwide considering it was the first movie of Marvel Studios, all the way to Avengers Endgame with the budget of 356 million while making $2.8 billion in revenue making it the TOP GROSSING MOVIE of all time beating Avatar. The last movie that Marvel Studios produced was Spiderman : Far From Home with the budget of $160 million while making $1.13 billion. This shows how far Marvel has come from making from making millions in revenue with budget also in MILLIONS, to budget being the same in millions but the revenue being in billions.

 

Marvel Entertainment Universe

 

In this blog we are going to discuss about the different products produced by Marvel studios.

Marvel Cinematic Universe

Consists of products other than movies that are produced by Marvel

TV Shows

(Non-Netflix)

1) Agents of Shield

2) Agent Carter

3) Inhumans

(Netflix)

4) Daredevil

5) Jessica Jones

6) Luke Cage

7) Iron Fist

8) The Punisher

9) The Defenders

(HULU series)

10) The Runaways