Finding a Better Way to Sort

Through the
Genres of Netflix
For Consumers

Netflix Inc.
United States

100 Winchester Circle

Los Gatos, California 95032

CEO: Reed Hastings

CFO: David Wells
COO: Neil Hunt

December 2014

Finding a Better Way to Sort Through

the Genres of Netflix For Consumers
by
Brooke E. Marquardt & Brianna Robertson
University of Southern Indiana
Evansville, IN 47712

Dr. Melanie Lee

English Department Orr Center
University of Southern Indiana
Evansville, IN 47712

Currently Unfunded
Netflix Inc.
United States

100 Winchester Circle

Los Gatos, California 95032

CEO: Reed Hastings

CFO: David Wells
COO: Neil Hunt

Executive Summary
Netflix, founded in 1997 has produced an extremely productive and successful enterprise
of live streaming videos. Netflix is responsible for bringing its consumers a large variety of
movies for any genre the consumer is interested in. However, just like any video streaming
technology, there are bound to be glitches. While Netflix has been successful in creating a forum
in which its consumers can view movies live, it seems as if the consumers spend more time
browsing what movies Netflix has to offer than they actually watch movies. With such a large
variety of movies, consumers have great difficulty selecting the movie they want to see. The
glitch with Netflix is the selection process. When searching for a movie to view on Netflix, there
is no sense of order. So, our proposal is that Netflix find an easier and faster way in which
consumers can navigate the movies that Netflix offers for live streaming.

Netflix Inc.
United States

100 Winchester Circle

Los Gatos, California 95032

CEO: Reed Hastings

CFO: David Wells
COO: Neil Hunt

Table of Contents
Cover1
Title Page.2
Executive Summary.3
Table of Contents4
List of Figures and Tables5
Body
1. Introduction..6
a. Background..6
b. Project Overview.7
2. Conclusions and Recommendations8
a. Conclusions..8
b. Recommendations9
3. Testing Methodology.10
4. Testing Results...11
5. Commercial Potential.12
References..13

Netflix Inc.
United States

100 Winchester Circle

Los Gatos, California 95032

CEO: Reed Hastings

CFO: David Wells
COO: Neil Hunt

Figures and Tables

As follows are screenshots of examples of the ways that you can
currently search through Netflixs systems:

Netflix Inc.
United States

100 Winchester Circle

Los Gatos, California 95032

CEO: Reed Hastings

CFO: David Wells
COO: Neil Hunt

Netflix Inc.
United States

100 Winchester Circle

Los Gatos, California 95032

CEO: Reed Hastings

CFO: David Wells
COO: Neil Hunt

Introduction
In 1997, one man had the extreme vision of creating a website that could instantly stream
television shows and movies to your home. This website also allowed consumers to order DVDs
straight to their own homes! This wonderful creation was called Netflix and the genius creators
and CEO is Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph. Netflix was founded in 1997 and launched in
1998. In 1999, the subscription price for this service was priced at a low monthly fee of $7.99.
In 2002, Netflix finally went public and by 2005, the company had started shipping out
DVDs. However, the year 2007 is when the demand for streaming video really kicked into place.
With a growing need comes a growing business, and in 2010, Netflix expanded to Canada.
However, as the streaming of videos became more and more popular, the DVD delivery
service dwindled. In September 18, 2011 Netflix then made the decision to rebrand/restructure
its DVD home video rental services as an independent subsidiary company. Thus, Qwikster was
born!
September of 2014 brought on the subscribers in over forty countries with intentions to
expand services even more globally. By the second fiscal quarter of 2014, Netflix has over fifty
million subscribers.
However, this is not the only thing that Netflix has to be proud of. With such popularity,
Netflix started creating their own mini-series, called Netflix Original Productions. & On January
16, 2014, The Square became the first-ever nomination for an academy award. Since then,
Netflix and its actors have gone on to win many an award.

Netflix Inc.
United States

100 Winchester Circle

Los Gatos, California 95032

CEO: Reed Hastings

CFO: David Wells
COO: Neil Hunt

Project Overview
Netflix currently operates under the finding system of searching by alphabet and names.
They also offer the added feature of allowing up to five users under one subscription, a feature
that is unique only to Netflix. In order to keep track of what you want to watch later. This feature
is called My List. To help you search and distinguish what is what, Netflix has everything that
they offer categorized under genres, though it does not show you every genre that they offer.
The problem we see here is that people often times end up settling for what they can find,
not knowing entirely what they are missing. Also, the larger of the two problems that weve
found: people spend more time on Netflix wading through the genres than actually watching
what they find and settling on.
We wish to make it simpler for people to find something watch, thus saving time, and
making the consumer happier. Through research and watching other methods from similar sites,
a new type of search engine could be put into place. As well as searching through the alphabet to
see what each letter brings up, we are suggesting a pull down tab with a list of short, multiple
choice questions that can help guide you to something to watch in a more efficient way.

Netflix Inc.
United States

100 Winchester Circle

Los Gatos, California 95032

CEO: Reed Hastings

CFO: David Wells
COO: Neil Hunt

Conclusions and Recommendations

Netflix is a company that is currently growing at a very rapid rate and has already
encompassed a lot of large changes in a very short period of time as starting out as a business.
We believe that our solution would not interrupt the status quo but act as an improvement to
Netflixs searching programs.
This can be helped: we propose time related experiments. Netflix could form a sort of
think tank and monitor the amount of time these users search for something to watch versus the
amount of time the user spends watching what they have found.
All of this, of course, is dependent on how willing Netflix is to work on the problem or
accept any kind of criticism. We do not see this posing a problem, but it is good to be aware of it,
because this would also allow them to work with outside resources.

Netflix Inc.
United States

100 Winchester Circle

Los Gatos, California 95032

CEO: Reed Hastings

CFO: David Wells
COO: Neil Hunt

Testing Methodology
In order for Netflix users to better navigate the contents of live streaming videos we
intent to impose a few organizational and functional techniques. These techniques are as
follows:
1. Hide We hope to implement a hide option key. This key will allow all users to eliminate
videos they do not wish to view from there streaming list. This elimination will also allow space
for additional videos to be listed that are more acquainted with the viewers taste in videos.
2. Parental LockWe wish to apply a parental lock option so that children are unable to watch
certain videos, or even genres, without the explicit permissions from their parental guardians.
While there is an option for a specifically kid friendly Netflix, it is very easy for kids to switch to
the original Netflix with the knowledge of parental guardians. Netflix also features the useful
Profile option so that each Netflix users can create their own personal viewers profile. What
we propose is that these
individual Profiles be
locked with a password
in order to restrict the
viewing by children.

Netflix Inc.
United States

100 Winchester Circle

Los Gatos, California 95032

CEO: Reed Hastings

CFO: David Wells
COO: Neil Hunt

Commercial Potential
There are several aspects that this improvement can have commercial potential:
Improve watching performance
Easier to navigate
Increase of advertisements
Competitive advantage

Netflix Inc.
United States

100 Winchester Circle

Los Gatos, California 95032

CEO: Reed Hastings

CFO: David Wells
COO: Neil Hunt

References
http://www.corporateofficehq.com/netflix-corporate-office/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix

Netflix Inc.
United States

100 Winchester Circle

Los Gatos, California 95032

CEO: Reed Hastings

CFO: David Wells
COO: Neil Hunt