Blockbuster Case Study Essay

1. How strong are the competitive forces in the movie rental marketplace? Do a five-forces analysis to support your answer.

Blockbuster implemented a new strategy for customers to access their rentals in “five channels of distribution: in-store, by mail, through vending machines and kiosks, online, and at home (direct to the TV)” (DATAMONITOR, 2009). However, this strategy was a reactive approach to the problem produced ten years behind schedule. Wooldridge et al., (2007) stated that Blockbuster should select and adapt their strategy to respond to the fast changing market and maintain a competitive position. This was an obvious failure for Blockbuster. The changes in the market produced a decline in profit at a faster pace than the strategies that Blockbuster implemented to combat these losses.

Netflix does not allow customers to watch all released movie on demand. There are some movie that customer cannot instantly watch. If Netflix developed streaming service and figure out a problem of coexisting between rentals and streaming service, Netflix can create competitive advantage.

Occasionally, people use to go out and rent DVD’s to watch a specific movie from rental stores. Advancement in technology has brought a sufficient change in customer’s behaviors, today DVD rental stores have almost gone. Moreover, by time we saw enormous increase in channels being provided by cable providers, but today even that has been replaced by streaming media devices, thus my time, role of cable providers might also disappear due to the introduction of devices such as Netflix, Apple TV etc. “DVD sales have also been hit. The Los Angeles-based Digital Entertainment Group estimates DVD sales in 2008 fell 8% to $21.6 billion from a year earlier, while DVD rentals were flat.” Charny, Ben. "Viewers Tap Free Web Content." Wall Street Journal, Eastern

Blockbuster used to have so much power in the movie rental industry until Redbox and Netflix have come to the market. One of Porter’s five forces

Blockbuster Entertainment, Inc. was once a highly successful and profitable brick and mortar home movie and video game rental store. At its peak in 2004, Blockbuster had up to 60,000 employees and more than 9,000 stores. The idea behind Netflix came from an unsatisfied, embarrassed customer of Blockbuster, Mr. Reed Hastings, now CEO of Netflix, paid a $40 late fee because he returned the movie Apollo 13 six weeks later (Zarafshar, 2013). He began to contemplate ingeniously about a notion to change the movie-leasing pattern into a more pioneering industry. In 1997 Netflix was started as a DVD rental-by-mail business without subscriptions. In 1999, taking a stride additional in the direction of evolving the industry, Hastings began the subscription-based business mode based on renting DVDs by mail with plans reliant on the quantity of titles taken at a time. Netflix put forward 120,000 titles for limitless monthly DVD rental with free shipping no late and per title fees. Since that time Netflix has become one of the most popular subscription services in the world, and is now valued at over $28 billion and steadily increasing. What factors contributed to the success and failure of these two companies?

2. What forces are driving changes in the movie rental industry? Are the combined impacts of these driving forces likely to be favorable or unfavorable in term of their effects on competitive intensity and future industry profitability?

The movie studios want customers to be able to get their movies and entertainment as easily as possible. The easier it is for people to acquire their products the more likely it is that they will. By offering many different options for customers to obtain movies and entertainment, Blockbuster has a strategic advantage over its competitors. The convenience that Blockbuster can offer in their ability to distribute the movie studios products is a definite advantage. Another advantage

4. The bargaining power of buyers: The outlook for the target market isn’t favorable for the movie industry because it will not be growing as fast as the overall population. Buyer power is a strong force because of the target market and several other factors including: the undifferentiated product offered, switching to an alternative is simple and low cost, and customers can stay home and watch movies. The consumers are also complaining about concession and ticket costs, along with the advertisements before the film is shown.

Growing competition as a challenge represents the various companies that are now entering the market of online media-streaming. Companies such as HBO, Amazon, Google, and Hulu Plus have all began to offer media-streaming on the same electronic devices as Netflix, Inc. Currently Netflix, Inc. remains in the lead amongst its competitors; however, there is no guarantee that this advancement is a permanent one. It is inevitable that emerging companies will come up with creative ideas to gain the competitive edge and receive more consumers. For example, Amazon.com has “amplified

Blockbuster’s restructuring of the company under its new owners shows how they were open to organizational change. The text describes organizational change as the movement of an organization from one state of affairs to another. Blockbuster completely changed their strategy and technology in order to compete with the new technology based companies that put them in this position in the first place. Simply put, no one visited the stores to rent movies when they could just turn on their television to order on-demand showings for the exact same price without leaving their home or grab a couple movies for a dollar apiece while grocery shopping. If they did not change they were sure to fail as a business and the company would disappear into the long list of companies that failed in the economic recession. The change was forced by other companies’ utilization of technology that caused a drastic change in the market conditions. This shift enabled the cheaper, more convenient home entertainment to steal a huge chunk of market share from Blockbuster’s traditionally structured company. Blockbuster enjoyed a long period on top of the movie rental/ home entertainment industry and this could possibly be what caused the success of these newer

The competitive forces in the movie rental industry are quite strong, as I will explain through the five forces model. There are a vast amount of substitutes for watching a movie. You can go to a play, sporting event, concert, out the lake/beach, go for a run, watch regular television, go shopping; I could go on and on. Also, torrenting or pirating movies is growing increasingly popular. Buyers have a strong presence in this industry mainly because they are picky about how much they will pay to rent or stream a movie. With the amount of substitutes and their pickiness, they make this

untouchable and we were all doomed to a lifetime of late fees and limited movie

One the one hand, the fertility of the industry opened the doors to corporations that sighted substantial growth potential. New entrants with big pockets such as Walmart could pose a certain threat to Netflix, by exploiting a playing card based on cost reduction. On the other hand, barriers to entry became relatively significant as established video rental retailers such as Netflix have the experience and the knowhow to market movies to people. In this industry, firms that do not have a technological advantage can’t compete. The best example is Netflix’s CineMatch program that offered personalized film recommendations based on customer’s rental patterns. This way, Netflix was able to better serve its subscribers. From a cost perspective, the movie rental industry requires high capital expenditures, and the major expenses are highly related to acquisitions of DVD library and investments in technology (exhibit 2 continued). Thus, we may say that entry is difficult in this industry as the competing firms have reputation, experience and recognizable brand names.

The online movie rental business is changing. As technology changes, DVD’s will not be the medium of choice. The shift will be downloadable movies. Most people enjoy the ability to watch a movie immediately, thus another of Netflix’s