Just when I think Blockbuster is pretty much dead in the water they go and release their new Total Access plan. With Total Access you can pick-up videos both in-store and online and mix and match between the two. I think this strategy is brilliant and I’m really beginning to wonder why Blockbuster didn’t implement this a couple yeas ago during the heated battle for online movie rentals.
There’s just one catch. I for one loathe Blockbuster simply for the fact that I had to put up with their ’suck every penny from your customer’ type approach they’ve used in the past. Talking with others’ briefly about it seems to reveal similiar distaste for the company as well.
Undoubtedly being influenced by too many Seth Godin talks I’m beginning to wonder if Blockbuster’s new plan will fail simply because of their prior failures in the ‘customer experience’ area. From the surface it seems Blockbuster is doing everything right: heavy commercial air-time, competitive pricing, and the convenience of having stores in nearly every major town in the US. However, is their history of poor customer service going to be a major factor in Total Access’ acceptence with the movie renting populace? I’d love to see some numbers for how effective Total Access has been for Blockbuster.
Another thing I’m not sure Blockbuster underestimates is the important for some sort of instant access to movies via a Tivo-like/Apple TV type device. Amongst talking with friends and coworkers the biggest want seems to be an instant, easy to use device that would allow downloading of movies right to your living room TV. I’ve seen stories here and there for the past two years about Netflix’s investment in just this sort-of thing — and the latest release of its PC movie downloading service seems to confirm these rumors. Blockbuster would be wise to put just as much effort into this as their Total Access effort.
Posted on February 18th, 2007 by Ian
Filed under: The Bad, The Good, The Ugly