From São Paulo to Seoul: Netflix’s strategies in peripheral markets

Abstract

Aiming to examine Netflix’s strategies in its global expansion and based on the debates on the transnationalization of tv flows, we observe the platform’s presence in two peripheral markets: Brazil and South Korea. In both, we find similar tactics, such as the licensing and commissioning of local content and partnerships with national production companies. Although we identified a recent shift in the company’s strategies from Latin America towards the Asian market, we argue that it is imperative to deconstruct Netflix’s position as a mediator of narratives to and from the “rest of the world”.

Disrupting Brazilian television: Streaming and the decline of Globo's hegemony in video cultures

“…Netflix partnered International Journal of Cultural Studies 27 (1) with regional telecommunications firms that provided high-speed internet statewide to deploy web servers nationwide to boost its numbers. The streaming service ultimately gained a foothold by leveraging the existing niche audience in Brazil that was already watching US content (legally and illegally) by offering a library of popular titles that had aired on Brazilian cable television (Meimaridis et al, 2021). It also offered an extensive collection of foreign films, some of which were dubbed in Brazilian Portuguese and licensed Brazilian telenovelas from RecordTV and SBT, and films from independent production companies to provide domestic content.…”

Lost in the Stream: An Overview of Online Distribution of Latin American Films Co-funded by European Film Funds

“…19 According to Netflix's quarterly earnings breakdown in 2020, the Latin American market is responsible for 18.49 per cent of the platform's subscribers worldwide. 20…”

Keys to streaming success

“…La investigación también revisa el fenómeno de la resonancia en redes sociales como indicador de éxito (Raya-Bravo y Cobo-Durán, 2020; Ruiz del Olmo y Bustos-Díaz, 2020;Martinez et al, 2021;Higueras-Ruiz y Alberich-Pascual, 2021;Fernández-Torres y Villena-Alarcón, 2021;Benavides-Almarza y García-Béjar, 2021;Syahriyani et al, 2022) y el uso de los Big Data y algoritmos de recomendación (Hill, 2014;Morris, 2015;Fernández-Manzano et al, 2016;Atique, 2018;Murschetz y Schlütz, 2018;Herrero-Subías et al, 2018;Doyle, 2018;Dudoignon et al, 2019;Herranz Donnan, 2019;Montardo y Valiati, 2021;Ríos, 2022;Eklund, 2022;Schaffner et al 2023), destacando aspectos como la fabricación de audiencias a partir de procesos computacionales, la influencia de los algoritmos y de los sistemas de recomendación en las elecciones de los usuarios y el papel de estas compañías como nuevos intermediarios culturales o infomediarios (Morris, 2015;C Lawrence, 2015;Doyle, 2018;Braghini y Montaño, 2019;Lamkhede y Kofler, 2021;Labarta-Postigo, 2022). Asimismo, esta investigación aborda el fenómeno del éxito en el marco de la transnacionalización de los flujos televisivos y la globalización de la audiencia impulsada por las plataformas de streaming (Taneja y Webster, 2015;Doyle, 2016;Doyle, 2018;Turner, 2019a;Limov, 2020;Wayne y Castro, 2020;Lotz, 2021;Meimaridis et al, 2021;Navarro y Monclús, 2021;Sánchez-Mompeán, 2021;Bengesser et al, 2022;Kus...…”