Introduction to Elasticity
5.4 Elasticity in Areas Other Than Price
BRING IT HOME
That Will Be How Much?
How did the 60% price increase in 2011 end up for Netflix? It has been a very bumpy ride.
Before the price increase, there were about 24.6 million U.S. subscribers. After the price increase, 810,000 infuriated U.S. consumers canceled their Netflix subscriptions, dropping the total number of subscribers to 23.79 million. Fast forward to June 2013, when there were 36 million streaming Netflix subscribers in the United States. This was an increase of 11.4 million subscribers since the price increase – an average per quarter growth of about 1.6 million. This growth is less than the 2 million per quarter increases Netflix experienced in the fourth quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of 2011.
During the first year after the price increase, the firm's stock price (a measure of future expectations for the firm) fell from about $300 per share to just under $54. In 2015, however, the stock price is at $448 per share. Today, Netflix has 57 million subscribers in fifty countries.
What happened? Obviously, Netflix company officials understood the law of demand. Company officials reported, when announcing the price increase, this could result in the loss of about 600,000 existing subscribers. Using the elasticity of demand formula, it is easy to see company officials expected an inelastic response:
![\begin{array}{l}
=\frac{-600,000 /[(24 \text { million }+24.6 \text { million }) / 2]}{\$ 6 /[(\$ 10+\$ 16) / 2]} \\
=\frac{-600,000 / 24.3 \text { million }}{\$ 6 / \$ 13} \\
=\frac{0.025}{0.46} \\
=-0.05
\end{array}](https://learn.saylor.org/filter/tex/pix.php/c9c81ced4cd37da48737b5de96d911cf.svg "\begin{array}{l}
=\frac{-600,000 /[(24 \text { million }+24.6 \text { million }) / 2]}{\$ 6 /[(\$ 10+\$ 16) / 2]} \\
=\frac{-600,000 / 24.3 \text { million }}{\$ 6 / \$ 13} \\
=\frac{0.025}{0.46} \\
=-0.05
\end{array}")
In addition, Netflix officials had anticipated the price increase would have little impact on attracting new customers. Netflix anticipated adding up to 1.29 million new subscribers in the third quarter of 2011. It is true this was slower growth than the firm had experienced – about 2 million per quarter.
Why was the estimate of customers leaving so far off? In the 18 years since Netflix had been founded, there was an increase in the number of close, but not perfect, substitutes. Consumers now had choices ranging from Vudu, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Redbox, to retail stores. Jaime Weinman reported in Maclean's that Redbox kiosks are "a five-minute drive for less from 68 percent of Americans, and it seems that many people still find a five-minute drive more convenient than loading up a movie online". It seems that in 2012, many consumers still preferred a physical DVD disk over streaming video.
What missteps did the Netflix management make? In addition to misjudging the elasticity of demand, by failing to account for close substitutes, it seems they may have also misjudged customers' preferences and tastes. Yet, as the population increases, the preference for streaming video may overtake physical DVD disks. Netflix, the source of numerous late night talk show laughs and jabs in 2011, may yet have the last laugh.