Porter’s Generic Strategy
Animation and cinema courses in Nigeria imply development in regions with more affordable prices for mastering a prestigious and promising profession. At the same time, there are no plans for high differentiation in courses in the first stages of the development of the project. Instead, a unique atmosphere is offered, focusing on customers, their creativity, and the region’s flavor. Most of the courses are presented in the capitals and offer strategies for high differentiation, high cost, or reduced cost (Ai Multimedia Academy, n.d.; MX Film Academy, n.d.; Top 11 Nigerian Film Schools, 2022). According to Porter’s strategies, we can say that courses in Lagos occupy one of the positions of general cost and broad differentiation in the matrix in the figure. If we take the regions as a niche market that companies of this kind do not yet occupy, then a startup on this matrix initially occupies the position of cost focus. Initially, this project requires impressive costs or the need to cooperate with large film companies to rent equipment in exchange for training promising personnel. In any case, teachers are required to be paid.
In the future, after the initial investment allows the company to reach its design capacity or after any grants or subsidies are received from the state for a startup operating in a promising area, the courses will be able to develop towards a differentiation focus. This fact means that it will be necessary to first reduce possible costs by providing cheap rates for a large mass of client flow. In the future, the price will remain at the same level, only considering inflation and the corresponding economic growth in the industry (Okorie et al., 2021). Therefore, a startup will be at the intersection of cost focus and differentiation focus with a strong bias towards the left side of the matrix, as regions need affordable courses, regardless of the development of the industry (Babatunde, 2018). Due to high competition, entering the capital is not seen as a possible development strategy.
Stakeholder’s Matrix
The stakeholders in this project are clients, and the startup itself is extremely client-oriented, unlike courses in Lagos. Most metropolitan courses have specific deadlines, which are short enough for graduates to reveal their creative potential hardly. This startup is more committed to its graduates finding suitable jobs for them. As a result, clients, unlike competitors, have a relatively high degree of power: the result of the educational process largely depends on regional flavor and creativity. Naturally, the first classes will contain an introduction to essential basics, but in the future, the courses will be aimed not only at developing professional skills but also at unlocking creativity, which is extremely important in this industry. As for interest, these courses are not free, and therefore each client will be highly interested in the result. Unlike competitors, expectations may likely be lower due to the low price, but the courses are generally associated with exciting and promising professions, as figure 2 shows.
Mission, Vision, Purpose
The company must have a purpose and objectives consistent with its vision and mission. Since the vision is how the company sees itself in the future, and the mission is now, animation and film courses in Nigeria can be described (Barrow, Barrow, and Brown, 2018). The company’s mission is to train qualified personnel for the booming entertainment industry with one of the highest GDP in Nigeria (Etuk, 2020; Chindma, 2021). Sustained growth implies the creation of many jobs and the development of related industries in animation and content creation, which will naturally require new talent (Husseini and Sunday, 2019; Olugbemi-Gabriel, 2020). The company’s goals are to provide professional training using appropriate equipment, create a client-oriented approach with the possibility of further mentoring, and support graduates’ creative potential through film festivals and events. The company plans to expand to regions other than Lagos in the future. As a result, the startup’s vision is to create a strong brand distributed to all regions of Nigeria except the capital, supplying professional staff to the emerging industry and its related areas.
Diversification
The diversification of the services provided creates deeper specialties and versatile courses that will allow training more specialists, including those for related areas of games, animation, and advertising. The rest of the income generation will depend on the operational activities of the courses: how well graduates are employed and monetize their content. Further development will typically include expansion into other regions with a possible franchise sale; however, in this case, such an approach requires severe preliminary research an assessment of the infrastructure of the region, which can become an obstacle (Akinbolati and Ajewole, 2020; Babatunde, 2018). After the first students, the startup will also look to monetize course-created content that can be used for both marketing and monetization purposes on social media, TikTok, and other platforms (Tsai and Chen, 2021). Consequently, a startup will be able to receive feedback on all channels where their content will be presented, which can form a different vector of business diversification, taking into account the different needs and traditions of the regions.
Reference List
Ai Multimedia Academy (n.d.) Web.
Akinbolati, A., and Ajewole, M. O. (2020) ‘Investigation of path loss and modeling for digital terrestrial television over Nigeria’, Heliyon, 6(6), pp. 1-14. Web.
Babatunde, S. A. (2018) ‘Government spending on infrastructure and economic growth in Nigeria’, Economic Research, 31(1), 997-1014. Web.
Barrow, C., Barrow, P. and Brown R. (2018) The business plan workshop: A step-by-step guide to creating and developing a successful business. 10th eds. London: Kogan Page.
Chindma, A. (2021). Nigeria – Country commercial guide. Web.
Etuk, E. H. (2020) ‘Cluster analysis of Nigerian real GDP’, Ianna Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 2(1), pp. 119-132. Web.
Husseini, S. H., and Sunday, O. A. (2019) ‘From Nigeria film industry to Nollywood: land-marking the growth of the new wave cinema’ in Nollywood in Global Perspective (pp. 25-43). London: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. Web.
MX Film Academy (n.d.) Web.
Okorie, I. E., et al. (2021) ‘Modeling the relationships across Nigeria inflation, exchange rate, and stock market returns and further analysis’, Annals of Data Science, 8(2), pp. 295-329. Web.
Olugbemi-Gabriel, O. (2020) ‘History, policy and cultural beliefs in Nigerian video-films: the Yoruba film as Praxis’, Islamic University Multidisciplinary Journal, 7(1), pp. 97-103. Web.
Top 11 Nigerian Film Schools (2022) Web.
Tsai, P. H., and Chen, C. J. (2021) ‘Entertainment in retailing: challenges and opportunities in the TV game console industry’, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 60, pp. 102-105. Web.