Netflix Users Experience Paradox of Abundance

prostoalex writes "The deal seems to be rather simple — you pay a monthly fee, receive a certain number of DVDs, and as soon as you watch them, and send them back, there's more coming. This simple model made Netflix into a $1.4 bln company, but now, Wall Street Journal reports, some Netflix users are experiencing the abundance paradox — the movies arrive, collect dust on the customer's desks, and then are sent back for the new set of movies to face the same fortune. From the article: "'It's a paradox of abundance,' said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of culture and communication at New York University. If people aren't pressured to see a movie in a specific time frame, he said, viewers tend to put it lower on their priority list. 'When you have every choice in front of you, you have less urgency about any particular choice.'"

Comments

Re:Reminds Me Of Columbia House Record Club

[andrewman327]

Yes, but that would be blatently illegal should a "friend" decide to "borrow" said disk in lieu of renting it himself. If I wanted to go to the trouble of dealing with DVD files and burning them and such, why would I pay the monthly rental fee instead of simply downloading them in the first place?