Can Redbox survive without a good selection?
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
When I want to rent a movie, its a little annoying if its out of stock, but it really toasts my crunchies if the place I fo to get it from doesn’t stock it at all. Redbox, the automated DVD rental kiosk has entered the very competitive industry with an aggressive roll out of locations, but has been hampered by anti-competitive (some would say illegal) business practices, and now a new policy to only attempt to st0ck top tier new releases. Universal, Warner and Fox have all put pressure on DVD suppliers not to sell new releases to RedBox in a misguided effort to protect a failing business model. Redbox responded quickly by using alternate means to obtain new releases so they could meet customer demand…so far so good. But as of late there have been several new movies that just didn’t appear at your local Redbox, and a new analyst report has stated that this in an intentional omission.
Apparently, Redbox doesn’t think its profitable to stock new release titles that were not big box office hits. While its certainly true that you can’t expect any physical location to stock every single title, to ignore significant releases is one sure way to lose customers in a hurry. People (thats you and me) are not to tolerant of being disappointed. If you stop by a Redbox, and they stock the movie you want…and it happens again, pretty soon your not going to even bother looking. This type of negative reinforcement will quickly erode the customer base, and at a time when physical DVD rental is nearing decline in favor of streaming media, I just don’t think this bodes well for Redbox.
Attention Redbox, if you decide to not even attempt to stock mainstream new releases, I will stop even looking. I don’t like disappointment, and when I heard 3 major movie studios were trying to prevent you from getting new releases, I felt like supporting you to show they my middle finger…but if you can’t be bothered to try and provide me with a good selection, sorry but that’s something entirely different.
