Comcast continues to remain a family-owned company with key members of the founding family continuing to serve on its board and in key executive roles. This research considers the marketing strategy at Comcast, including positioning and the company's overall marketing mix.
To understand a company's marketing strategy, it is necessary to understand the industry in which the company operates. Comcast's core business is in the cable television industry, an industry that is both highly regulated and characteristic of monopolistic competition. In the cable television industry, a single company such as Comcast is given the rights to a particular region from the municipal authorities. Once those rights are won, that company is the only company that can offer cable television service in that area. Thus, cable television companies do not compete against each other in a single market for consumers. When cable television began its rapid expansion across the United States in the 1980s, there was considerable competition to gain access to regions. Once the nation was saturated with cable television coverage, there were few methods by which companies could expand their market share except through acquisitions. Deregulation in the 1990s hastened the merger and acquisition activity in this industry, resulting in consolidation and concentration. By 1999, ten companies served more than 71 percent of all cable subscribers in the United States, up from only 45 percent five years earlier. Comcast was among those five, and today is t
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