Slashdot Mirror
Wal-Mart Enters NetFlix's Business
wcbrown writes "AP reports that Wal-Mart is entering into the online DVD rental arena, currently dominated by Netflix. Wal-Mart is starting out with 13,000 titles, six distribution centers, and competitive pricing. With a seriously tremendous infrastructure and expansive will, Wal-Mart stands poised to overtake Netflix. To say the least, that's not going to be good for business."
You, my friend, do not have young children. "Hey, let's go get a movie" turns into a two-hour ordeal of car-seats, crying, dropped ice-cream, potty breaks and/or diaper changes, and so on...
The reality is that you give up a little spontaneity for a lot of convenience. You don't find hopping over to the video store for a movie all that troublesome, but there are plenty of people who do. Having a movie you want to see, right at hand, when you find yourself with a couple of hours of peace is a luxury to a lot of people.
I work with a guy whose family lives in Alaska. The one video store in town has a pitiful selection. Netflix provides something they simply can't get otherwise.
As far as movies go, there is a high psychological threshold that has to be reached in order to go rent a movie. Why? Because you have to go, pay on the spot, and are committed to going back within a few days to a week to return the movie. You are less likely to rent something wierd or experiement with different tastes because, well, because, that's just how most people are. But clicking on a movie on the site is low-threshold, and I find myself putting all sorts of odd movies on my netflix list that I would almost certainly never go through the effort to rent at Blockbuster.
I currently subscribe to Netflix, and at the rate they are either lost or stolen while in route back to the Netflix warehouse, I wouldn't want to be paying that for each one! Netflix has yet to charge me for those and state they won't unless it becomes frequent.
Anyway, I'll be sticking to Netflix...
I live to gib...
It looks like the first innovation Wal-Mart made was shifting the liability for lost/stolen DVDs to the consumer. With NetFlix, as long as it doesn't happen often, you don't get penalized for having one lost in the mail, with Wal-Mart, it costs you $17.88 (see here).