Competition in the Movie Rental Industry in 2008: Netflix and Blockbuster Battle for Market Leadership
2. What forces are driving changes in the movie rental industry and 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 economy is one of the reasons why rental industry went down. Less people are able to rent a lot of movies.
-Second and main reason that drives the change is Internet and streaming of video. Suddenly on the market we have some companies they offer unlimited watching movies for same price. One of them is Netflix.
5. What is Netflix’s strategy? Which of the five generic competitive
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| | | | | 717,452 | 965,939 | 1,190,113 | 1,830,857 | Non-current content library, net | 197,554 | 425,246 | 570,210 | 1,046,934 | Property and equipment, net | 134,800 | 136,948 | 143,993 | 136,353 | Other non-current assets | 40,382 | 42,560 | 57,242 | 55,052 | | $ 1,090,188 | $ 1,570,693 | $ 1,961,558 | $ 3,069,196 | Liabilities and Stockholders' Equity | | | | | Current liabilities: | | | | | | 490,318 | 726,709 | 967,966 | 1,225,055 | Long-term debt | 200,000 | 200,000 | 200,000 | 200,000 | Long-term debt due to related party | - | - | - | 200,000 | Non-current content liabilities | 67,119 | 251,302 | 348,182 | 739,628 | Other non-current liabilities | 57,029 | 58,648 | 57,058 | 61,703 | | 814,466 | 1,236,659 | 1,573,206 | 2,426,386 | Stockholders' equity: | | | | | Total stockholders' equity | 275,722 | 334,034 | 388,352 | 642,810 |
There are basically six technology-driven threats to the traditional rental model: (1) Cable companies offering Video on Demand (VOD), (2) online movie downloads, (3) online movie rentals, (4) disposable DVDs, (5) illegal movie downloads and DVD copying, and (6) Digital (or Personal) video recorders (DVR). (Jackson) One could also consider traditional pay-per-view (PPV) as and additional substitute. Only one of these seven, online movie rentals has proven to be a major competitive substitute for traditional movie rentals. All other areas, except traditional pay-per-view are expanding rapidly, but some face significant challenges.
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?
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.
4. Din, Yangon. (2007). Titled: The dynamics of the movie industry: Theatrical Exhibitions & DVD rentals. The University of Wisconsin.
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?
Student Cases with Solutions to accompany Accounting & Auditing Research: Tools & Strategies (7th edition)
1. Netflix’s original marketing strategy offered several flat-rate monthly subscription options; in which, members could stream movies and shows via the Internet or have disks sent to their homes in a pre-paid and pre-addressed envelope. Free from the despair of due dates and late fees, members could keep, up to, eight movies at a time. Upon the return of a disk, Netflix would automatically mail out the next movie from the customer’s video queue. Members were able to change and update their queues as frequently as they liked. The sheer innovation of Netflix’s strategy encouraged several competitors to enter the market to compete directly,
The forces that are driving change are more than likely going to be unfavorable to the movie rental industry considering the convenience and included perks of choosing them. I’ve had experience in the movie rental industry
What driving forces do you see at work in this industry? Are they likely to impact the industry’s competitive structure favorably or unfavorably? (Did we answer this question?)
Netflix is an entertainment company that specializes in streaming media and online video-on-demand. Over the years, it has grown to include film and television production and other distribution services. Its business model has changed, and so has its overall production cost grown to keep up with the increased market share. As a result, its current position in the market has made it more exposed to competition from other firms, which is why it needs to develop new strategies to remain profitable. Netflix has grown over the past years despite competition and its unprofitability (Helft, 2007). Therefore, to understand its success, it is important provide a microeconomic analysis of Netflix, its history, its products, and the market.
Ticket sales for movie theaters are at their lowest point since 1996. With the core demographic group expected to grow slower than the US population and with technological advances growing at speeds faster than the industry can keep up, ticket sales will continue to decline if the current business strategy continues to be followed.
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