Blockbuster Essay

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Industry Introduction Blockbuster was at one point the leader in the Video Rental Industry. Upon entering the new millennium, big video rental stores was preferred amongst consumers. The larger video rental stores accounted for 60 percent of the market with Blockbuster holding the market leader position with over 30 percent market shares (Almeida, 2011). During this time, Hollywood Entertainment was Blockbuster’s closet competitor and they only held 10 percent of the market share. A part of the reason why Blockbuster was able to maintain its competitive advantage for so long was due to the exclusive contracts made directly with the movie studios. Blockbuster was able to cut the middle man, distributors, in order to obtain their inventory. During the era of VHS, Blockbuster paid significantly less for new release tapes, only $4 in comparison to the $65 that their competitors were forced to pay (Almeida, …show more content…

Even with 48 million customer account by 2002, the increase in DVD popularity signaled great change for the video rental chain. Blockbuster was now having to compete with discounters such as Walmart, Target, and Best Buy in the DVD sales market (Anderson, 2002). The discount retailers were able to successfully compete with Blockbuster by offering DVDs for purchase at a cheaper value, for example $16 new release at Walmart versus the $20 new release for purchase at Blockbuster. The increase in DVD popularity also signaled the end of Blockbuster exclusive relationship with major Hollywood studios. The days of revenue sharing agreements were at an end. Blockbuster purchased DVDs from studios at $17 per disk which was the end of the deal (Anderson, 2002). The price from the agreements was still low enough to allow Blockbuster the ability to keep shelves full. Unfortunately, many of Blockbusters competitors were also benefiting from the cheaper studio prices associated with

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