Analyzing GoPro: Strengths, Weaknesses, Threats & Trends

Strengths

The internal, positive advantages that GoPro has compared to competitors are the production of high quality action cameras that are usable in every situation of life, and brand awareness. Because GoPro was the first company to specialize in small action cameras it had a competitive advantage from the start. GoPro kept this advantage by remaining to sell high quality products. Consumers that choose GoPro focus on the quality and all the features a GoPro Hero 7 has compared to other cameras.

Another important aspect that brings potential users to GoPro is the brand awareness. Thanks to well executed online marketing consumers associate GoPro with exciting actions. Next to excitement, GoPro also creates online engagement with the brand. GoPro has a special marketing team searching online for emotional and impactful content recorded by users. Because GoPro has a lot of users it would take almost three years to watch all the uploaded content online (Cooke 2014). When users upload their own GoPro video they might get noticed by the online marketing team and be a part of the next GoPro promotion video or the next GoPro star (Landau 2014).

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Partnership with other companies associated with extreme sports such as Red Bull, gives GoPro a bigger audience and more brand awareness (Mohandas 2017). These factors are strengths for the brand GoPro Hero 7 and helps GoPro to sell its items.

Weaknesses

Despite GoPro’s strengths the company also has some internal, negative weaknesses that they have to pay close attention to. The production of GoPro cameras is an expensive process and the complete product line has very high costs.

A few years ago, the company had financial difficulty. To overcome this setback GoPro, among others, kept a tighter leash on expenses (CNBC 2018). GoPro significantly decreased the expenses on research and development and marketing to deal with lower revenue as shown it chart one and two (Statista 2018).

Opportunities: Next to the well-known action cameras designed to capture extreme sports, GoPro can also focus on other market segments. As stated earlier, more and more people want to use GoPro cameras to record memories and emotional moments (Landau 2014). The GoPro Hero 7 can be a perfect fit for this market segment, because it is small and convenient to carry around. The size of the camera is also very useful in the healthcare sector, and can be used during surgeries and dental treatments (PR Newswire 2017). The healthcare sector is a boosting market for GoPro, and so is the security sector. A GoPro can be useful in property protection, thanks to the small size and high quality (Rivera, et all 2013). In order for GoPro to market these new segments, the advertising and a few features should be adjusted to appeal to these different segments.

Threats

GoPro’s outside threats are mainly created by big competitors. Since the finding of GoPro other companies started developing their own action cameras. These cameras are comparable to GoPro Hero 7, but are accessible for a lower price. In the coming years the market is expected to see a foray of new players, which will heat up the competition even more (PR newswire 2017). To distinguish themselves from other companies, the new competition is looking to develop innovative products. The new products will contain unique features and higher quality cameras. GoPro has to keep up with these upcoming companies, because they form GoPro’s competition, and they can possibly take away potential customers. Another big threat for GoPro as part of the general camera market, is the decrease in demand for cameras. This decrease is created by higher quality of substitute products, such as mobile phones (Passport 2018). GoPro has to make sure to keep adding unique features to its product to distinguish itself, because otherwise mobile devices such as phone form a real threat.

Industry & Competitive Analysis

Despite the decrease in sales for the general camera market, the global wearable camera market is predicted to rise 13% during the time period of 2017-2025. The estimated worth of the market will grow to 8.12 billion dollars in 2025 (PR Newswire 2017). GoPro has the competitive advantage over mobile phones that GoPro can perform in circumstances that phones can not or in which phones are not practical. However, this advantage will not last forever. According to statistics, GoPro maintains popularity as imagining device, but also can not expect much demand growth in the coming years, because of new features on mobile phones (Passport 2018). Despite this decline, the revenue for wearable cameras is expected to grow from 2,278.34 million dollars in 2018 to 2,529.24 million dollars in 2022, as shown in chart 4 (Statista 2018).

GoPro has market shares in multiple continents, but they especially dominate the market in North America. GoPro had a 67% market share on the action camera market in 2014 (Lazich 2015). In the overall consumer electronics market, GoPro is the 23rd largest manufacturer of devices, and GoPro leads the unit sales of camrecorders in the United States. This gives GoPro an advantage over competition, and even made the name GoPro synonymous with the product format in the USA (Passport 2018).

Company Analysis

GoPro, Inc. NASDAQ: GPRO, with the brand GoPro, is a brand mostly known for action cameras. However, GoPro also produces and sells other electronical devices such as drones, camera mounts and camrecorder accessories. In 2015 GoPro sold 6,584 units worldwide, the most of the last couple of years. After 2015 the sales decreased, and so did GoPro’s revenue (Statista 2018).

After tough years in 2016 and 2017, the decline in sales turned around after 2017 with the release of the GoPro Hero 5 (Passport 2018). After 2017, the revenue also started to increase again. GoPro managed to increase the revenue by, among others, decreasing the expenses, as shown in charts 1 and 2 on page 5.

Industry Customer Analysis

GoPro’s target market consist of extreme sports participants and adventures. Users of GoPro look for small sized, high quality cameras to record their experiences. According to statistics 13% of the US population owns a GoPro or other smart photo/video device. 8.8% of the groups owns a GoPro action camera, and 2.5% of them used to own one. Only 2% said to own a similar action camera from a different brand (Statista 2018). The 2% of the action camera users owning a device have different options when buying an action camera. A couple of other action camera brands on the market are Sony, TomTom, and SJCAM. Most of these alternatives are less expensive than GoPro, but do not have the same features GoPro has (Carter 2018).

The users of GoPro are pretty satisfied with their product. 77.3% of the GoPro users is at least somewhat satisfied with their product, chart 8 (Statista 2018). Despite the high satisfaction rate and the relative small 13% of action camera owners in the USA, not a lot of other people are planning on purchasing a new GoPro. Statista shows that only 17% is at least somewhat likely to purchase a GoPro as of February 2016 chart 9 (Statista 2018).

As mentioned before, GoPro’s target market are extreme sports participants and adventurers. This is only a small part of the society, so it makes sense that 86.8% of consumers do not own a GoPro. A GoPro action camera is definitely a luxury good, so not a lot of people consider it as a necessary product. Despite the low rate of users, GoPro has a big social media presence. The GoPro YouTube channel is the 8th most popular channel on the platform (Statista 2018). This fact shows that GoPro’s marketing strategy, is very successful. GoPro’s marketing engages and excites users and nonusers online. GoPro informs its consumers about the product alongside a impressive and entertaining video recorded with a GoPro. Thanks to this marketing strategy consumers are very familiar with the brand GoPro, and will faster choose a GoPro over another brand. Shown by the fact that only 2% owns an action camera from a different brand (Statista 2018).