The Reason Blockbuster Video is going down: No Competitive Advantage

While I agree with Scott Jagow at Public Radio that Blockbuster is “probably toast,” it doesn’t/didn’t have to be that way.

I rarely rent movies. I dropped Netflix because of all the scratched discs. Otherwise, it was a great service. I’m considering GreenCine (Netflix for film snobs). I usually buy DVDs that I like because I’ll probably want to watch them again. An exception happened the other day when I was looking for a film I wanted to “preview” before buying and couldn’t find adequate clips of it online. So, I went to my local Blockbuster Video to rent It Might Get Loud, a documentary on the electric guitar told via Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), The Edge (U2), and Jack White (White Stripes). It was a great documentary and I’ll end up buying it. But, the experience at Blockbuster was the intriguing part.

As I walked into the front of Blockbuster Video, I noticed a large banner above the door where they compared themselves to Netflix and Redbox (who are certainly encroaching on their market share). The upshot of the sell was “we’ve got you covered.” Next, I spent way too much time trolling through ramshackle eyes, stepping past posters of the Beatles, toys, small appliances/game systems and everything but videos until I got to the section for Documentary/Music. The film was nowhere to be found. Stubbornly, I looked in a few other sections, confused as to whether the slipcase of the DVD meant it was in stock or not. Finally I asked the employee, who looked it up and found that it was “along the wall somewhere” under New Releases. The film was released last summer. What constitutes a “New Release” then?

Why can’t Blockbuster increase the value proposition by offering a self-serve kiosk, tied in to a remote/iPhone application, to allow customers to see directly into inventory and, importantly, where a film is located within the store? Even better, show the number of rentals/reviews/throughput through all BB stores, etc.