Re: Blockbuster Spends Last Few Dollars on Weak Ad
[quote=”Naylia”]
I wonder if after Blockbuster dies, if someone will be able to reinvent the store front movie rental chain. After both CompUSA and Circuit City died, went bankrupt and sold the rights to their names, they have started to make comebacks….
[/quote]
I’ve been thinking something along that line for a while now. I don’t see anything like BB coming along ever again. It’s not just BB or CompUSA or CC, EVERYTHING is moving online. The internet is killing storefronts. In essence, it’s killing an American past-time: malls. (That’s not to say America is the only country with this past-time.) A B&M (brick and mortar) store which has rent, insurance, lots of employees, warehouses, etc., simply cannot compete with an internet store which needs very little of any of those and, thus, operates with very little overhead. Years ago, buying certain things online would have sounded ridiculous: furniture, TVs, cars. Now? Pretty much par for the course.
To date, there are still a few things people won’t (or can’t) buy online. Anything which needs to be “tried”, such as beds or furniture, falls here. You can’t tell how comfortable they’ll be without trying them out. Clothing is still difficult because the size may be wrong and you can’t tell how it will really fit you, nor could you tell how it will look on you. Although, a demo of MS Kinect showed a great example of how the latter could be done. I couldn’t believe I spent a few thousand on a TV I never saw first-hand. I also got online quotes for my new car, although I still wanted to test drive one. I bought a dining room table set online about 2 years ago, having never actually seen the model in the store. I didn’t think that would be possible either.
In the end, I realize it’s still a long way off, but we’ll eventually buy just about everything online and “going to the store” will be a phrase from a bygone era.