Introduction
Blockbuster Inc. was founded in 1985 and is headquartered in Dallas, Texas. They are a leading provider of in-home movie and video game entertainment; heir retail stores rent and sell DVD’s and video games. Blockbuster has locations all over the world including the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Blockbuster has over 5,000 stores across the United States and an additional 3,000 stores worldwide. It is estimated that 43 million U.S. households have a Blockbuster membership.
Industry History
The introduction of the VCR to the market in 1975 was the first step to the video rental and retail industry. Movie studios soon began to release video cassettes of classic movies to boost revenues. This allowed customers to be able to get away from the confines of the movie theaters and cable station’s set schedules. However, few consumers were willing to pay full price much to buy a movie. In 1977 George Atkinson, “the inventor of video rental,” placed an ad in the local paper saying that he was renting videos for $10 per day. After threats of lawsuits from the film production industry, a U.S. copyright law was passed allowing the rental of videos. Rental shops began to emerge to serve those who wanted the convenience of home videos without having to purchase the movies themselves. As the prices of VCR’s fell, the number of people renting movies increased. Renting movies also became much cheaper for families. Instead of having to buy each family member a movie ticket, they could pay just one fee to rent a movie that the entire family could enjoy. As technology has improved, such as with the advent of DVDs, the movie rental industry improved with it.
Blockbuster History
In 1982 David Cook founded Cook Data Ser ...