Study of current market conditions and competitor strategies in the OTT industry and identification of current value denials to consumers

Abstract

The Indian OTT market has been the fastest growing media and entertainment business in India over the last few years. The market is currently crowded with over 30 competitors with nearly 350 million consumers. Even though there has been a lot of growth in the industry, there still exist many market gaps and value denials for the competitors to focus on. Given the market characteristics, it is tough to generate stickiness and differentiation among the competitors; therefore, these value denials become more crucial to focus on. The current study focuses on investigating these value denials through both a secondary and a primary study. The secondary study uses resources like market research reports, interview transcripts, newspaper articles from the last five years to explore the current market scenario and search for evident value denials. More specifically, it delves into the current market competitors, their strategies and differentiators, recent market development trends, consumer behavior and preferences, international market trends, some upcoming adjacent market developments, and the impact of Covid-19 for an exploratory search of the value denials. The primary study uses FGDs and a survey of the Indian consumers with the purpose of verifying these value denials and looking for the ones missed out in the secondary study. The questions and discussions in the primary study majorly revolved around getting to know the consumers’ experience with OTTs, their preferences on the platforms, challenges faced, suggestions to make the experience better, and so on. The value denials identified from the secondary study were segmented into six distinct buckets for a better understanding of the reader. These were ‘New business model,’ ‘Adjacent service provision,’ ‘Type of content/genre,’ ‘Geography,’ ‘Platform value,’ and ‘Experience value.’ Twenty-two value denials were identified after the secondary study. However, during the primary study, three of the 22 value denials were denied by the OTT consumers, and seven new value denials were identified through qualitative responses from the FGDs and survey. The final value denials after both the steps of the study were as listed below. New business model 1. Content/Platform aggregation 2. Increase in TVOD services by unbundling 3. Regional charging model 4. Better AVOD and SVOD integrations – Mid-tier charging model with ads 5. Premium pricing for immediate access of content over the staggered release of a web series 6. Better monthly charging plans for vacation/holiday time access Adjacent service provision Virtual Reality content 2. Short-form video platform integration (BTS, bloopers, actor interviews, etc.) 3. Partnerships with e-commerce platforms (functional partnerships) Content related 1. Regulating episode release frequency (binging preferred) 2. Original comedy content (More quality and quantity needed) 3. Interactive entertainment 4. Continuation of Direct-to-OTT 5. Dubbing regional content to other languages 6. Kids focused content Geography 1. Taking Indian content worldwide through international partnerships 2. International content available to the Indian market Platform value 1. Ability to critique the content (upvote/downvote/expression, comments, etc.) 2. Ability to watch together, watch parties 3. Ability to create communities and a peer-to-peer network 4. Better recommendation engine Experience value 1. Value-added features like subtitles in several languages, offline viewing, watchlist, etc., 2. Offline payment methods 3. Feature to speed up content 4. Advertisement content optimization (avoid repetition) 5. Live sports lag Some of these value denials have been implemented by some platforms individually but have not become an industry standard and have therefore popped up in the study. The current players in the market can further utilize these to create differentiation strategies and unique customer value propositions. The implications and explanations behind each of these value denials have been clearly stated in the report.