I swore off Blockbuster Video in summer of 2003. It wasn’t anything personal. The store ceased to offer anything that I wanted by way of non-New Release titles. Not to mention their wacky return policy for New Releases at the time (Oh, I can only keep this for three days? And tonight counts as the first day? And it’s due back at 12 noon the day after tomorrow?).
In an interview with Rafat Ali for paidcontent.org (Aug 18, 2008), Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes tries to make it sound like Blockbuster is going to be around for a long, long time. My favorite part was when he uses his personal film taste to describe his market strategy.
I don’t care how many movies are available to me. As my personal taste as a customer, I want to watch the new stuff so whether we have 10,000 movies or 200 movies it doesn’t matter if I don’t want to see any of the movies that we have. So, our assortment is heavily weighted toward newer releases and mainstream staple titles.
To be fair, Keyes is not nearly as aloof as Wired Magazine would have one believe, but he certainly believes that technology is the savior of Blockbuster Video in a way good customer service, clean facilities, a well-maintained catalogue of diverse movies and reasonable rental fees could never do. Of course, these are several of the reasons that I have heard ex-Blockbuster-customers state as things they no longer found. What I don’t think Keyes understands is that when people leave the brick-and-mortar store with a bad taste in their mouth, they are not real quick to hop online and fill up an online queue with the same company.
As Blockbuster’s shares dwindle down to roughly 70¢ a share (it was closer to $2.50 in August of 2008) and their lawyers “evaluate restructuring options, including a possible pre-packaged bankruptcy”, all the technology in the world may not be able to save it. Corporate branding works both ways, you know.
Hey! I know what you mean. I remember walking through that store and just never finding anything I wanted. I would not call my taste out of loop with society norms. No, in fact I like to watch the new releases that look interesting in the movie theater. Since they come to the theater before they go to a movie rental store, by the time they get to a movie rental store I am not interested in renting it because I have already seen it. I think perhaps this CEO needs to reconsider his ability to speak.