Essay Example on Liberty Global: International Cable Company Serving 27M Subscribers

Introduction

Liberty Global is an international cable company that has operations in 14 countries, including 12 countries in Europe (Barakaat, 2019). The company's market-leading triple-play services are provided via innovative technology platforms and the next-generation networks that connect customers of about 27 million who subscribe to 56 million television, telephony services, and broadband internet (Barakaat, 2019). Liberty Global employs 38,000 employees, and it serves 5 million mobile subscribers across nine countries (Williamson, 2018). The paper focuses on Liberty Global SWOT analysis, the company business opportunity, and offers recommendations on the implementation of the identified business opportunity.

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SWOT Analysis

The primary purpose of SWOT Analysis is to identify the key strategies that Liberty Global can utilize to seize external opportunities, counter threats, and protect and build Liberty Global strengths and eliminate weaknesses. It analyzes the competitive position of the company in its global business environment (Gurel & Tat, 2017). Liberty Global is on the top ladder in its industries, and it needs to maintain its position. The SWOT analysis will be used by the company to make strategic decisions. The analysis is successfully conducted through an interactive process which is undertaken by coordinating among departments such as Marketing, Strategic planning, finance, human resource, management information systems, logistics, and operations. It starts with listing the internal factors such as strengths and weaknesses, then focuses on external factors such as opportunities and threats.

Strengths

Liberty Global being of the leading company in its industry has various strengths that assist the company is thriving in the market place. The strengths assist in penetrating new markets and protect the existing market share. The first strength is a superb performance in new markets as Liberty Global has established expertise at entering new markets and ensuring that they succeed in each of them. The expansion into the new markets has enabled the company to build new streams of revenue and diversify the company's economic cycle risk in every market it operates (Thomas, 2014). The other strength is a reliable dealer community where the company builds an influential culture among dealers and distributors where the dealers invest in training the sales team to successfully illustrate to customers the way they can extract the highest benefit out of the company products. Also, the dealers promote the products of the company (Williamson, 2018). The third strength is a good return on capital expenditure as the company is highly successful in the execution of new projects, and good returns are generated on the capital expenditure on such projects by building new revenue streams.

Weaknesses

In this area, the company should take a step in improving it to realize high growth, build strategic positioning, and competitive advantage. Liberty Global has not succeeded in tackling challenges that emerge from new entrants in the same industry, and recently it has lost some market share in the categories of its niche (Williamson, 2018). The other weakness is on Research and Development as Liberty Global focus on R &D is below that of the fastest-growing partners in the same industry. It spends above the average in Research and Development, but it has not competed with the leading companies in terms of innovation (Gollnhofer & Turkina, 2015). Also, the company's financial planning is not done efficiently and correctly as the liquid asset ratios, and current asset ratio suggest improvement in cash usage than how it is being used currently.

Opportunities

The first opportunity for Liberty Global is market development, which is so beneficial to the company as it dilutes competitors' advantage and enables the company to increase its market competitiveness compared to other companies (Choudhary, 2016). The other opportunity is opening up new markets that are made possible by the adoption of new standards of technology by the company, which has to provide Liberty Global an opportunity to enter into new markets that are emerging in the global setting. New technology is another critical opportunity for Liberty Global as it can now practice a pricing strategy that is differentiated in new markets. The strategy will enable the company to maintain loyal customers and lure its new customers with exceptional service via other propositions that are value-oriented.

Threats

The company faces intense competition, which was caused by increased players in the industry over the last few years, which has resulted in downwards pressure on overall sales and profitability (Shichilenge, 2013). The other threat is the lack of regular supply of innovative products as the company has developed products that are new over the years, but receive a response to the development by competitors and low and high swings in sales is experienced due to irregular supply of new products. Changing consumer buying behavior is another threat as it threatens the existing supply chain of the company.

Company Business Opportunity

The notable business opportunity for Liberty Global that will enhance international activities is market development. The company market can be developed by identifying new markets in various countries where it has not ventured. With active markets, the company will be able to gain a more competitive advantage over competitors who will suffer from dilution of their competitive advantage (Udaya et al., 2017). The market development in the company covers the growth strategy, and it will focus on the identification of new market segments for the current company products and services. New customers through the market development are targeted in new segments that will be identified by the company marketing department (Lee et al., 2015) In the currently existing market segment; the company can develop marketing development strategy by targeting on bringing into board the customers who are not currently buying from the company (Baker, 2014). The core focus here is entering the international markets through the expansion of brands across the global environment.

Recommendation and Implementation of the Business Opportunity

The implementation of the business opportunity can be initiated by the company management in collaboration with their employees and with the help of new technologies. To successfully implement the company should consider the following recommendations:

• Liberty Global should introduce well-differentiated pricing techniques in the newly identified and ventured markets.
• Liberty Global should introduce new technologies in the new markets being developed to enable the company to attract and lure new customers via propositions that are based on the value of the company services.
• The company should utilize the opportunity of less competition in the new markets and make good agreements with governments of ventured countries to set a strong base for their operations and get more sales.

References

Baker, M. J. (2014). Marketing strategy and management. Macmillan International Higher Education.

Barakaat, C. (2019). Liberty Global SWOT & PESTEL Analysis. Comprehensive SWOT & PESTEL Research Reports. https://www.swotandpestle.com/liberty-global/Choudhary, V. (2016). Adopting Cloud at Liberty Global. file:///C:/Users/user/Downloads/AdoptingCloud.pdf

Gollnhofer, J. F., & Turkina, E. (2015). Cultural distance and entry modes: implications for global expansion strategy. Cross-cultural management. https://doi.org/10.1108/CCM-07-2013-0114

Gurel, E., & Tat, M. (2017). SWOT analysis: a theoretical review. Journal of International Social Research, 10(51). http://sosyalarastirmalar.com/cilt10/sayi51_pdf/6iksisat_kamu_isletme/gurel_emet.pdf

Lee, Y. K., Kim, S. H., Seo, M. K., & Hight, S. K. (2015). Market orientation and business performance: Evidence from the franchising industry. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 44, 28-37. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2014.09.008

Shichilenge, E. N. (2013). Mergers and acquisitions: a case study on Liberty Global Inc. and Virgin Media Inc (Doctoral dissertation). http://repositorio.ucp.pt/handle/10400.14/15531

Thomas, Z. (2014). Liberty Global's HY pushes Chilean innovation. International Financial Law Review. https://search.proquest.com/openview/7067a7cac19eccbdea14b30e945ce9f1/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=36341

Udaya, B., Indhumathi, T., Varshini, R. A., & Kumar, S. S. (2017). Customer management model for telecommunication services. In 2017 Third International Conference on Science Technology Engineering & Management (ICONSTEM) (pp. 207-213). IEEE. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8261284

Williamson, D. (2018). Liberty Global plc SWOT Analysis. https://www.essay48.com/term-paper/5146-Liberty-Global-plc-Swot-Analysis