Improving Comcast's Merger With Time Warner Cable

Improving Customer Service

Comcast is consistently ranked as one of the worst cable providers. Not for their Internet speeds or channel offering, but because their customer service is one of the worst in the industry. The once possible merger with Time Warner Cable would have been a combination of the two lowest ranked companies. The world is no longer a place where people will put up with poor customer service because there is only one or two options for cable or Internet. Now there are plenty of options out there and customers are more likely to go with DISH Network, Hulu, or Netflix instead of dealing with Comcast when something goes wrong. This weakness is also Comcast’s greatest opportunity because it is something they are well known for,

The theme parks they now own, and are continuing to expand and build more of, are a lucrative business. The denial of their purchase of Time Warner Cable is proof the ISP market is saturated in the United States. Therefore Comcast should turn the acquisitions outside that industry. Comcast has the opportunity to horizontally integrate to complement the services they provide now. One such opportunity is to acquire an apparel company. This would allow them to control design and manufacture of products that they could sell within their theme parks. NBCUniversal creates content and owning an apparel company would allow them to make complementary apparel. They would even have the possibility to introduce these products into movie theaters if they also acquired a theater company as discussed earlier. Comcast started as a simple ISP, but has burgeoned into a massive media conglomerate. If they are to expand even further and enter other industries than they should do so in small increments. This is a way to expand into a completely different industry, apparel, but still tie it into what they are currently doing. It isn’t a completely unrelated move, but it is just close enough to their current strategy that it is

They are in the process of acquiring Time Warner and with it Warner Bros. This puts them in direct competition with Comcast in theme parks. Time Warner also owns HBO as well as a few major television studios. Their acquisition of DirecTV in 2014 also put them in more direct competition with Comcast’s cable providing service. Charter Communications stepped in to buy Time Warner where Comcast could not. Spectrum, the new name for the combined companies, is a strong competitor in some regions to Comcast. This merger also relates to the threat of Comcast growing too big within their industry and being restricted by legislation.