Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Rogers and Blockbuster are doomed?

 

I rented a movie for the first time in ages just last week and a thought suddenly struck me. How much longer will Rogers and Blockbuster last? They are losing substantial ground to netflix and zip.ca – something very drastic needs to be implemented in order to gain lost ground. It seems to me they are both very stuck in their ways, offering “deals” every once in a while, then taking them away. So what can they do to stay competitive with the changing times?

Here’s a small list I came up with.

1) They can adopt netflix and zip.ca business plans and essentially do the same thing. Before they lose to much ground.

2) They could implement a sort of usb drive system, where blockbuster or rogers would sell usb drives that hold movies. People could then directly download movies from a rogers system, of course Rogers would need to put some type of lock on the usb drive so files can only be read and not transferred by un-certified computers. Make it so there are different sizes of usb’s and you only have so many movies on a harddrive at once. Either charge per download, by data or whatever.

3) Introduce some type of community family watching event. They need to make their stores not just a video store but a go to location – by hosting free movie nights, pop-corn parties – something! Why – because it gets people into the store, it gets people to remember the beauty of renting movies, to remember their businesses.

Rogers and Blockbuster need to do something if they want to survive, and they need to do it soon. At the unoriginal rate they’re going at now I cannot see their video rental services lasting much longer. I went into blockbuster at peak time and it had one other shopper aside from me and 4 staff - that my friends is a business losing money.

I invite my readers to post their thoughts. Where do you see Rogers and Blockbuster going in the next five years? Is renting movies still a viable business? Do they need to change anything?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Well, some Rogers Video stores are starting to close down and Blockbuster... Well, just yesterday or the other day, they're thinking of heading to auction as this could possibly be the only option to get out of bankruptcy so I personally dont think it'll be a smooth ride from this point on.... As you've said netflix is others are starting to take over and that, you can now even rent videos on Shaw on Demand!

Kyle said...

Ya. Interesting. Carl Icahn is one of the greatest corporate raiders in history.
I have no idea if he is still dismantling and trying to make a fortune for shareholders, but if he is - it's certainly the end for blockbuster.

Kyle said...

http://ozarksfirst.com/fulltext?nxd_id=403206