Strategy and performance of audiovisual streaming platforms

Abstract

Purpose: This work aims to analyze and classify the competitive strategies of 37 streaming platforms and identify which strategic groups perform better globally. Design/methodology/approach: This study is based on the structure-conduct-performance paradigm and uses Porter's typology to reach its goal. It classified the 37 platforms into their respective strategic groups based on eight strategic variables using k-means cluster analysis. Then, group performances were compared using ANOVA to test the mean differences of two performance variables. Originality/relevance: The audiovisual industry is experiencing a radical change in content consumption, distribution, and production. Streaming technology, which delivers content over the internet without downloads, increased flexibility and sparked a wave of adoption of audiovisual streaming platforms that destabilized other sectors, such as home video. Consequently, this phenomenon left a gap in studies about the strategy and performance of the industry, which this paper intends to fill. Main findings: As a result, 14% of the platforms studied were allocated to the Differentiation strategic group, 30% to Cost Leadership, 19% to Differentiation Focus, 8% to Cost Focus, and 30% were considered Stuck-In-The-Middle. We identified that the strategic groups present significant differences in performance, validating the applicability of Porter's typology. Theoretical contributions: The study found that broad-spectrum strategies such as Cost Leadership and Differentiation promote better performance than focus strategies at this industry stage. Surprisingly, Stuck-In-The-Middle companies also perform well, similar to companies with broad-spectrum strategies.