An industry analysis of HMV company in the UK Essay

An industry analysis of HMV company in the UK - Essay ExampleConsumers have various products to choose from, either purchasing in blu-ray disc formats or on-line medical specialty downloads in MP3. Challenges of piracy and illegal downloading in the market have been playing a great role in the physical sale of euphony. Plans for dealing with piracy and illegal downloads would be to development growth of live entertainment and ticketing, as stated on the HMV group website. As stated on Complete Music Update (2012) home page, HMV competitively cared the market for music entertainment with Amazon, with HMV having 19.9% and Amazon, 19.2%, though HMVs percentage growth of its market share has faced considerable challenges from play.com, iTunes and supermarkets. Like any different company going through the various stages of growth which are market introduction, growth, maturity and saturation and decline, HMV has foregone through different growth stages since its opening in 1921, whi ch marked its market introduction stage. The company increasingly grew, expanding its markets and consequently increasing sales, human resources and advertising, competition being minimal at the time (Reynolds et al., 2004). In the 1960s, HMV experient tremendous growth. It expanded and doubled in size so that by 1976, HMV was the leading retailer in the UK, specializing in music and other entertainment products. Despite the completion which was s menial-pitchedly arising in the market at the time from the likes of Virgin Megastores and Our Price, HMV was more popular and somewhat unbeatable compared to its competitors. HMV purchased Waterstones book store set up in 1998 and joined it with Dillons. HMV saw its floatation in the London Stock Exchange in 2002, which was a significant indication of its maturity. However, it started trading poorly from 2003. Other competitors in the market arose, more so online music stores which competed with HMV for the same market share and saw it s decline in the market share. This eventually led to low sales, low profits and closure of some HMV outlets. HMV still bought some book store chains and music retailers, for example, Ottakars and Zawi. HMVs performance in the market deteriorated progressively, some of its shares were up for sale so as to purchase other outlets, but its sales kept going down up to the selling of near of its outlets in London, including Waterstones chains. This marked HMVs decline stage due to high costs of running, low sales and minimal profit margins. See the appended map of HMV Product Life Cycle. The main competitors of HMV, who offer a similar line of products, are Amazon.com, iTunes, supermarkets and Play.com, which have online music stores besides other online retail products. Amazon has a wide set up of music and digital products and has been a stiff competitor of HMV, competing for the same market share but more so doing it online. iTunes by Apple Inc. also provides products along the same lines. HMVs consort to digitizing their music and video clips has helped to catch up with the market trends and technology as its competitors in the market. Play.com deals in online retail of similar products as HMV and Amazon.com. With the tremendous innovation in technology and online trading, HMVs competitors venture into online trading adjust them ahead of HMV which is embracing online trading. Supermarkets also offer competitive products though HMV provides a considerable wider product range than supermarkets, which would often