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The rise and fall of blockbusters
The rise and fall of blockbusters
The rise and fall of blockbusters
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Founded as a single store in Dallas in 1985, Blockbuster quickly became a household name аnd withstood the historic trаnsition from VHS to DVD. Dallas-based Blockbuster аnd its 9,100 stores, more thаn half in the united states, mаny with expensive leases, has mostly become a dinosaur almost overnight. The business itself risks becoming a vаnishing concept in its current form. This crisis mirrors a similar slump in the box office this year, attributed to mаny of the same factors, people preferring to whatch a movie at home/online. Unlike blockbusters largest rivals, Blockbuster is simultаneously investing hundreds of millions of dollars to compete with upstart Netflix in a new online service, аnd losing hundreds of millions in revenue from …show more content…
We now all know what happened with blockbusters. Blockbuster went bаnkrupt in 2010 аnd Netflix is now a $28 billion dollar compаny, ten times what Blockbuster was worth. Blockbuster failure to innovate with the chаnging times аnd rise of the internet lead to their downfall. Should they have grasped the opportunity to move their services online (Taken Reed Hastings proposal) we would have talked about blockbusters instead of Netflix. By already having a reputation with their client base should they have moves their services online the customers would not have been unfamiliar with the name(brаnd), thus trusting in the name, allowing for аn easier trаnsition online. But its failure to adapt fast enough as soon as Netflix аnd smaller rivals started mailing videos аnd selling videos on demаnd turned Blockbuster’s legion of storefronts into dinosaurs. The chain had no choice but to close hundreds of stores, pay of debt аnd now follow instead of leading the new innovative evolving market. Following a failed bid by South Koreаn telecommunications compаny SK Telecom, DISH Network stepped in with lofty turnaround talk, but eventually its plаns to trаnsform Blockbuster into a worthy Netflix adversary failed. (Hoque,
That evidence was clear Monday as Redbox, the nation's largest DVD rental company, agreed to spend up to $100 million to acquire Blockbuster-branded DVD kiosks operated by its largest rival, NCR Corp., adding about 9,000 machines to its existing 35,400 (LA times 2012).
Cineplex Inc. is a Canadian Film Exhibitor company that operates only in Canada for the time being. It operates in the Entertainment industry, and pretty much has a monopoly over the movie theatre and film exhibition sector in most parts of Canada. However, the current data in Canada suggests that Video-On-Demand (VOD) popularity is experiencing a rather rapid increase, followed by an increase in sector’s development and revenue all around. Nowadays, all of the major Canadian broadcasting companies -- such as Rogers -- offer some sort of VOD service to their customers.2 Therefore, the net attendance of movie theatres, Cineplex Inc. in particular, inevitably go through a yearly drop. On the other hand, the industry is constantly growing and attempting to overcome its obstacles by introducing new features and services. Therefore, the profitability of the industry is constantly sustained.
In 1985, Blockbuster opened its first store in Dallas, Texas. After the first few stores opened, founder David Cook built a six million dollar warehouse, which could pull and package multiple stores in a day. Blockbuster’s ability to customize a store to its neighborhood, loading it up with films geared specifically to demographic profiles in addition to the popular new releases, and a sizable collection of catalog titles. Blockbuster had instant success. In the early 1980’s and 1990’s Blockbuster put neighborhood mom and pop video stores out of business by offering better selection and convenience. However, success like that enjoyed by Blockbuster can foster arrogance. For Blockbuster, arrogance meant they believed they could do anything within their stores. For example, Blockbuster purchased Sound Music and Music Plus chains. This move took Blockbuster from movies to music. Secondly, this Blockbuster Music meant they were no longer renting now they were selling.
After much success with waste management, including buying 90 competing trash collection companies and annual revenue at excess of $1 billion a year, Huizenga decided to leave WM and went on to buying hotels, warehouses, pest control companies, office building, etc. In 1987, a former associate a WM had persuaded Huizenga to look into blockbuster. Huizenga then bought 43% of the company at $18 million. By 1991 blockbuster had expanded world-wide with more than 2,000 stores. In 1994 Huizenga sold his shares of blockbuster for $8.4 billion to Viacom Inc. (owners of MTV).
According to the history of movie rental, home video, and gaming, Netflix was the first company to introduce the movie rental service back in April of 1998 and offered more than 900 titles (Lardener, 2010). Ever since, the industry has become larger with new technology such as online streaming and next day delivery. Also, more competitors are now available and provide the same services, such as Amazon, Wal-Mart, blockbuster, and Redbox kiosks.
Therefore, Netflix has fewer problems predicting revenue. ? Netflix enjoys lower fixed costs due to the fact that it is an online DVD rental company. As an internet business, Netflix incurs less overhead costs than competitors such as Blockbuster, as well as having fewer employees to operate the physical locations, thus labor costs are greatly reduced. ? Netflix gives customers unlimited access to the largest selection of DVDs. Netflix?s video library consists of over 45,000 titles, making their selection the worlds largest, beating out Blockbuster, Movie Gallery, and Hollywood Video. ?
The average Blockbuster store carries roughly 1,500 movie titles. Netflix carries more than 12,000 titles. It has movies that you can't find anywhere else. And Netflix uses collaborative filtering technology to send you emails that alert you to movies that you might otherwise never consider. Netflix saw the video- and game-rental market moving to DVD and built its business around that trend. Netflix doesn't rent videocassettes, only DVDs (in part because they're lighter and cheaper to mail). Netflix was able to identify and implement a strategy fo...
Blockbuster founded in 1985 by David Cook, the first store opened in Dallas, Texas. At its peak, Blockbuster had up to sixty thousand employees and more than nine thousand stores.[4] “With more than 8,000 VHS tapes in more than 6,500 titles, Blockbuster store was three times larger than its nearest competitor. Unlike other video chains that stored movies behind the counter, Blockbuster displayed titles on shelves.” [2] It became the giant movies and video games rental chain. So, why such a giant entertainment provider ended up filed for bankruptcy and closing thousands of it stores? It leaves you with a weird memory and hard to get worked up about a once massive corporation, but still dewy-eyed recalling a trip to brin...
The idea inspired Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph, and then they founded Netflix in Scotts Valley, California in 1997 (Netflix, 2014). The company comes into play by developing a subscription-based streaming platform for movies and television shows. Unlike the traditional movie rental businesses such as Blockbuster and Redbox, Netflix’s innovation offers service via Internet, and it does not have any physical stores but instead delivers DVDs through postal mail in the U.S. Since then, Netflix has become the world’s leading internet television network with constant growth of customers to over 48 millions members in more than 40 countries in the North America, Europe, and the Latin America (Netflix, 2014). In this analysis, the main focus is examining the current market environment for Netflix. It identifies the type of market structure that Netflix is currently competing. The analysis also expands on the competitions, product differentiation, pricing strategy, and measuring the level of easy entry-and-exit.
The video rental industry began with brick and mortar store that rented VSH tape. Enhanced internet commerce and the advent of the DVD provided a opportunity for a new avenue for securing movie rentals. In 1998 Netflix headquartered in Los Gatos California began operations as a regional online movie rental company. While the firm demonstrated that a market for online rentals existed, it was not financially successfully. Netflix lost over $11 million in 1998 and as a result significantly changed the business model in 2000. The new strategy included focusing on becoming a nationally based subscription model and focusing on enhancing the subscribers experience on their website. The change in strategic focus has allowed Netflix to grow into the largest online entertainment subscriptions service in the United States with over 6.3 million subscribers (Netflix).
From its inception, Netflix has become a business based on superior customer service and has subscribed its business to the market marketing management philosophy. The main purpose behind Hasting’s idea of a better way to rent and enjoy movies was how to provide that service to their clients and not have any late fees. In other words, their customers could enjoy their rentals from Netflix for as long as they wanted, and they would never have to worry about late fees again, so long big movie rental chains! This aspect alone of Netflix’s marketing plan indicates that Netflix has based their marketing plan on market orientation, “a philosophy that assumes that a sale does not depend on an aggressive sales force but rather on a customer’s decision to purchase a product,” (Lamb, 2009, p.7). Many companies that take on this philosophy are said to implementing the market concept. The marketing concept states: “The idea that social and economic justification for an organization’s existence is the satisfaction of customer wants and needs while meeting orga...
Although Hastings vowed to be divergent from other video retailers, his goal was to use an identical pricing strategy; however, one that would “appeal to customers [. . .] who used online shopping as an alternative to traveling to retail outlets” due to ease of access and more preferences (Shih, Kaufman, & Spinola, 2009, p. 3). Furthermore, Netflix launched its business at a time DVDs had barely hit the marketplace as the firm anticipated the new technology to be a promising venture. Nonetheless, within a year DVD players became so vast...
As the firm moves forward, top managers must pay attention to staying unique to sustain a competitive advantage. Netflix does not own their content, nor do they have any tangible assets. Netflix is a part of a broad range of network users. As technology continues to grow exponentially, Netflix will have to be readily adaptive to change and innovation. Technology never stops growing and evolving, therefore, Netflix’s business platform should never stop growing and evolving. At the same time, they must be careful to remain user friendly and customer centric by keeping the technology at a level where users will not have to obtain a certain set of technological skill sets.
In this paper, I would like to analyze Netflix’s distinctive strategies based on their competitive advantage and how it covers from its strategy mistakes in the high threat industry as well as give some viable suggestion for the future development of the company.
As the one whom draws the biggest crowds, the blockbuster seems the best choice to start with. The blockbuster draws extreme crowds on the opening weekend, and continues to draw crowds for however long it remains in theaters. It usually has a large fan base already, but that is not a requirement for a film to reach blockbuster status. The blockbuster usually gains a sequel, but there are some cases where that has not happened, and doubtless, there will be more. There are some cases where a sequel is a blockbuster as well.