When Netflix launched in the Netherlands last month, Kelly Merryman, the company’s vice-president of content acquisition, told a reporter that her company purchased Prison Break partly because of its popularity among the Dutch torrenting crowd.

Resource: http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/10/10/pirate-raid-22/

In Commerce 101, we have discussed Netflix and did a business case analysis of the company. Now, whenever I’m searching online for business news, I always check for news about Netflix; today I found an interesting blog post “How Netflix Knows Who Wants to Watch What” by Nick Taylor-Vaisey, which addresses how Netflix comes to know their customers’ preferences. Nick suggests that the company has its snoops in the dark corners of the Internet, looking very carefully at file-sharing websites and purchasing those shows that are most popular among the legions of bit torrent pirates. That practice seems to comply with what we talked about in Commerce 101; that is, if you want to increase sales and profits, first you establish your company’s brand position and value proposition and target a specific customer segment to which you direct your consistent marketing message. I consider Netflix to be in an excellent position to benefit from its clever application of IT infrastructure and information systems to accumulate and measure the information supplied by their customers. The company should also run more on online surveys to better understand the wants, needs and preferences of its users and employ those survey responses to inform their marketing practices and drive revenues.

Reference: Taylor-Vaisey, Nick. “Business Blog.” Macleansca How Netflix Knows Who Wants to Watch What Comments. N.p., 10 Oct. 2013. Web. 18 Nov. 2013. <http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/10/10/pirate-raid-22/>.