Yesterday I was driving down a street on Chicago’s west side and noticed a Blockbuster store. I know! I noticed one!
This wasn’t just any Blockbuster, though. It wasn’t Blockbuster Video – it was Blockbuster Media. The sign was shiny and silver and high-tech-ish. And inside? Well, I don’t know. I didn’t go in, but I rarely go to any media stores nowadays. It’s part of their new, exciting (not really) strategy as doled out by their CEO last year:
I look at retail in the future, not in the past and when I think about how people want to buy consumer electronics or content, I think Apple versus Sears, and that’s what we were trying to accomplish with Circuit City. That’s what we will try to accomplish as Blockbuster Media, not Blockbuster Video which is the old form of retail that we had, but Blockbuster Media is looking forward into the future saying: ‘What I really want is a solution. I would like to come to a place where I can get my hardware and my software and somebody to show me how it all works in an easy way. I want a place that will satisfy my desire for convenient access to media any way I want.’ That’s Blockbuster.
I don’t know. Leaving my house, getting in a car, driving to the store, walking around the store, picking some media out, waiting in the checkout line, noticing all of the impulse items like $5 tubs of popcorn, dealing with an apathetic employee, leaving the store, coming home, and “consuming” the media versus just typing a few things and getting it from Netflix, Amazon, Apple, or (eesh) Microsoft?
Yeah. Good luck with that whole thing, folks.
Posted in Consumer Commentary