Marvel Enterprises, Inc is an industry leader of character-based entertainment, building its foundation on publishing comic books and licensing character rights over the past seventy years. After encountering some hardships in the late nineties, Marvel repositioned itself as a powerful global firm under the leadership of new CEO, Peter Cuneo. He developed a strategic recovery plan, allowing Marvel to overcome bankruptcy through the monetization of its extensive content library, long term development of characters, and the assurance of high-quality for all Marvel-related products. However, by 2004 concerns arouse regarding the sustainability and continued growth potential of this business model. Marvel needed to determine whether continuing their focus on popular characters was a sustainable strategy or if it was necessary to expand into lesser known characters to reach a larger audience. Cuneo also wondered if Marvel should venture past is current business operations to invest in content creation, rather than licensing the rights to others to do so.
Marvel is currently competing in a red ocean, attempting to exploit existing demand and outperform its rival competitor, DC Comics, vying to obtain a greater market share. In order to do this Marvel should consider creating two divisions of character development. The first will focus solely on maintaining popularity and profitability of well-known characters such as Spiderman, while the second will focus exclusively on developing lesser known characters. This will allow Marvel to uphold the reputations and sales of its most profitable characters, while also bringing its unknown ones to superhero status. It is also recommended that Marvel stays true to its production of only publishing and toys, instead of expanding into other areas of content creation. Marvel’s lack of expertise in other areas may lead to lower quality products,