My Take Radio

Josh Fuld– Author Of Bran­don Sparks & The Hid­den Sun , as well as a reg­u­lar caller and con­trib­u­tor to the show, wrote this very thought-out post regard­ing Blockbuster’s poten­tial demise and how they can evolve and improve with a new strat­egy. Have a look and share your thoughts. I per­son­ally think his sug­ges­tions are very sound and have the poten­tial to save this sto­ried franchise.

Block­buster, The Future of Entertainment?

There are thou­sands of Block­buster stores around the world that have become dinosaurs. They focus on movie and game rentals and sell movies at full retail. I believe that by har­ness­ing the power of the Block­buster brand and the fact that they have excel­lent cov­er­age nation­ally, Block­buster stores and Blockbuster.com could eas­ily become your favorite place to con­sume entertainment.

1. Blockbuster.com is a very pop­u­lar site. Yes it is not nearly as pop­u­lar as Net­flix, but that is not impor­tant. Blockbuster.com has a huge cus­tomer base and they need to revamp the sys­tem so that their cus­tomer base can pur­chase items at Block­buster retail stores using their online account. How do they do this? Read on…
2. Video kiosks (ala Jet Blue check in) should be set up in every store. Kiosks should be easy to use, have large screens and allow the cus­tomer to watch thou­sands of movie trail­ers, behind the scenes clips, as well as rent and pur­chase any item in the store. Users can log in to their Blockbuster.com accounts and pay using the credit card (or pay­pal) they have stored online, or they can pay at the reg­is­ter. The goal here is to com­bine the func­tion­al­ity and ease of shop­ping on the Inter­net with the instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion of hav­ing what you want right now.
3. Kiosk will print out a receipt with a num­ber. An employee will pick order and num­ber will be called out. Employee will ver­ify order vs receipt from kiosk. This is the same sys­tem chain restau­rants use, like Green Cac­tus or Baja Fresh.
4. Employee’s will pick all of the mer­chan­dise for the cus­tomer? How will this work? Block­buster will remove all (or most) of the phys­i­cal inven­tory from the store and put it all behind the counter. Video games and movies take up very lit­tle room, and extra stock could be kept in a back room along with larger items, such as video game con­soles and Tivos. Block­buster could adjust their inven­tory so instead of hav­ing 50 copies of Breakin’ 2: Elec­tric Booga­loo, they could have two copies in stock and reorder when needed.
5. What is Block­buster going to do with all of the freed up space? I’m glad you asked. They are going to enter­tain you. All of the walls will be cov­ered with large flat panel TVs that will broad­cast Block­buster News, a one-hour, daily review of every­thing going on in the world of movies, tv and video games. They will have video game con­soles with the newest releases so that you can play them. You get the picture.
6. Why would any­one use Net­flix when there will be Block­buster by Mail? If you already par­tic­i­pate in Blockbuster’s all you can eat rental pro­gram, you will be given an enve­lope with your order at check­out to mail in your rentals. If you are not part of this pro­gram, for a small fee, you can buy an enve­lope. This will save you an annoy­ing trip back to the store and Block­buster gets a lit­tle extra change for mak­ing your life easier.
7. What’s the best way to get more traf­fic into Block­buster store? Cheap new releases. In order to get more traf­fic, Block­buster should offer new release DVDs and Blu-rays at sig­nif­i­cant dis­count. This would be sim­i­lar to Best Buy’s Tues­day flyer pro­gram, but the movie’s should be cheaper. This will estab­lish Block­buster as the place to get new movies. Why let Best Buy dom­i­nate? Once Block­buster is get­ting more traf­fic, and peo­ple expe­ri­ence the new Block­buster, they are more likely to sign up for the rental program.
8. Have you ever been inside a Game Stop? It’s like going to a flea mar­ket. The employ­ees try to push prod­uct on you that you don’t want and try to scare you into their pre-order pro­gram. Why would a per­son ever shop at a Game Stop when they could expe­ri­ence the new Blockbuster?
9. Speak­ing of Game Stop, one way that Block­buster could really increase their traf­fic is by set­ting up a used game pro­gram. Game Stop pays next to noth­ing for games. Why not offer a lit­tle more as well as spe­cial dis­count and reward pro­grams for peo­ple who buy and sell used games. It seems like a no brainer.

Block­buster needs to trans­form itself from a place that rents movies to an enter­tain­ment des­ti­na­tion where peo­ple come for their enter­tain­ment news and to fully immerse them­selves in entertainment.