Essay on Renting and Rental Service .3 Blockbuster

Submitted By kennyyik
Words: 311
Pages: 2

Netflix is one of the most recognizable online movie rental services in the world. Since the company's launch in 1998, its business model has revolutionized the movie rental business and the way U.S. viewers rent and watch movies. Netflix's service has captured approximately
6.7 million subscribers and offers a video library of more than 90,000 movies, television, and other entertainment videos on DVD.1 The majority of Netflix subscribers pay about $18 per month and are allowed to keep up to three movies at a time.2 Although Netflix was the first company to tap this new market of online movie rental, they would not be the last trying to capitalize on its potential.
In August 2004, Blockbuster countered Netflix's entry into the movie rental business with a strategic response by introducing Blockbuster Online, its own online rental service.3 Blockbuster Online offered the same services as Netflix, putting the two companies in direct competition with each other for the first time. In late 2006, Blockbuster revamped the online rental service and renamed it "Blockbuster Online Total Access:'4 This new Blockbuster service gives the customer the option of either returning the video through the mail or dropping it off at a local Blockbuster store.5 It does however, encourage customers to return videos rented online to the store by offering a voucher for a new in-store rental.6
As Blockbuster boasts, "With this kind of access, you'll never have to wait to