Comcast Porter's 5 Forces

Porter’s five forces model identifies and analyzes five competitive forces of industries. The first of Porter’s five forces model is the threat of new entrants. Comcast’s core business segment is cable communications. In this segment, Comcast faces a relatively low threat of new entrants because cable communications possess high capital requirements, which prevents many companies from exploring the industry. Cable communications also require an enormous amount of time creating an infrastructure to support consumer and business needs. Moreover, Comcast owns $257 million in patents, which also creates barriers to entry into these markets. Thus, Comcast’s cable communications face a low threat of new entrants due to the high barriers to entry …show more content…
Comcast’s cable communications faces a relatively low bargaining power of the buyer. For example, residential consumers of Comcast Cable are not able to negotiate prices due to the absence of bargaining power for commoditized services. Though consumers are able to switch service providers due to low product differentiation, there are few service providers in most regional areas limiting consumers to little or no choice. Furthermore, Comcast has gained even more power as residential clients become “increasingly dependent on TV, internet, and phone services.” Therefore, Comcast’s cable communications face low bargaining power of the buyer. The third of Porter’s five forces model is bargaining power of the supplier. Cable communications faces low bargaining power of the supplier. The availability of substitute supplies for cable communications is high and possess low switching costs. Furthermore, the suppliers for cable communications sell non-differentiated products lowering the bargaining power of the supplier. As a result, the bargaining power of the suppliers is low due to non-differentiated products, availability of substitutes, and low switching