Netflix and Blockbuster battle for Market Leadership
Strategic Issues
Netflix has limited streaming via online downloading. They also have limited market segment. Blockbuster does not maintain enough inventories of new releases, and also needs to expand into online downloading.
Analysis
Industry’s Dominant Economic Features
The movie rental industry’s market size is relatively large with $24.9 billion in 2007, which is up from $22 million in 2004. The growth rate will continue to rise with the demand for movie entertainment. There are a few numbers of rivals, but the industry is consolidating to an even smaller number of competitors. Today the scope of competitive rivalry is a globalized industry but in the beginning of this industry it would have been local, regional and national. The numbers of buyers have been increasing since 2000 with the introduction of new technologies has rapidly increased consumer opportunities to view movies. Consumers could obtain movies through various channels. They could purchase them through retailers such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Amazon or they could subscribe to Netflix or Blockbuster and have movies directly mailed to their own homes. They could also subscribe to any cable movie channel to order movies instantly streamed to their TV’s on a pay-per-view basis. The degree of production differentiation is low since movies are a commodity. Customer can either get their product through digital streaming online, by mail, vending machine, Video on Demand (VOD) or in stores and all be the same product and quality. Concerns with production innovation, the movie rental industry should continually pay attention to research and development to gain competitive advantage over rivals by being first to market with a new product. A new product for this industry has been the Video-On-Demand (VOD) where VOD providers delivered rented movies via a file downloaded to a PC or