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Re:Blockbuster: Losing the plot by jonnathanson on Monday November 03, 2014 @03:37PM (#8553322)
As far as I can tell, Redbox targets a different consumer base from Netflix's. The majority of Redbox machines are placed outside of Safeways, Walgreens, Walmarts, 7-Elevens, and so forth. The sort of customer who rents DVDs from these machines is likely to be of lower socioeconomic status than your typical Netflix subscriber. He or she may not have a cable subscription, may not have high-speed internet access [1], and may deem Netflix's monthly fee to be too expensive. He or she could be a working-class parent, a college student on a tight budget, or maybe a reasonably affluent professional who, for one reason or another, doesn't consume enough entertainment to find Netflix worthwhile. On top of this base, you have a small proportion of ad hoc Redbox usage from people who happen to stop by, see a movie they can't get on Netflix, and check it out. And you have a very small proportion of film buffs who prefer the AV quality of physical media, like Blu-Ray.

Time will tell how long this strategy will work for Redbox. In their favor: their 36,000 kiosks are placed directly in the footpath of hundreds of millions of shoppers every week. (Walmart alone sees over 100M shoppers per week in the US, and 3,700 Walmart stores have Redbox kiosks). Working against them: broadband penetration, Netflix, Amazon, and the steady transition away from physical media.

[1] About a quarter of US households do not have high-speed broadband. That number will shrink over time, obviously, but perhaps not as quickly as we like to think it will.

Re:Blockbuster: Losing the plot by exelius on Monday November 03, 2014 @04:56PM (#8553809)
It's actually more than a quarter depending how you define "high-speed broadband". A good number of households in the US are on <6mbps ADSL connections, which realistically aren't fast enough to stream video. Most statistics I've seen show streaming video penetration is closer to 40% of US households.

And you're right about adoption: there are a lot of people in the US who just don't care about the Internet. They will be increasingly less relevant as time goes on (this is already causing social angst at some levels) but they will persist. Usually you don't see 100% adoption of things like this until all the old people die and are replaced in the consumer pool by younger generations (aka generational cyclicality).

Re:Blockbuster: Losing the plot by platz on Monday November 03, 2014 @04:30PM (#8553651)
Regarding locality, they experimented with selling local event tickets through their kiosks for a short time, I don't think it lasted too long though and dissapeared quietly. http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/4/3453566/redbox-concert-eve...
Re:Blockbuster: Losing the plot by e40 on Monday November 03, 2014 @03:55PM (#8553429)
I walk by Redboxes fairly frequently and I can say that in my area the customer base is definitely in the lower socioeconomic class.
Re:Blockbuster: Losing the plot by mkr-hn on Monday November 03, 2014 @08:03PM (#8554635)
Redbox seems to get new movies long before Netflix, so that's one thing I'd use it for if they didn't come to Comcast's VOD thing earlier.