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Comment by pkulak | Hacker News Reader

I know this is an extreme comparison, but Walmart reminds me a lot of Blockbuster. I remember Blockbuster thought it would be fine because of physical stores all over the place. They thought they had a plan to leverage that, but they never could. Turns out no one cared about the physical stores.

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Blockbuster's failure will be an important example for Walmart just as soon as people can download groceries, clothing, toothpaste, and lawnmowers.

> Blockbuster's failure will be an important example for Walmart just as soon as people can download groceries

Was Blockbuster killed by streaming? Or Netflix swapping rental from an ad hoc retail to a delivery subscription model?

> Was Blockbuster killed by streaming? Or Netflix swapping rental from an ad hoc retail to a delivery subscription model?

Both, together.

The popularity of Redbox demonstrates that some people really do appreciate being able to drive to a store and rent a DVD. Blockbuster probably died because enough people switched to Netflix that the overhead of running stores outgrew the revenue. Redbox then swooped in with automated kiosks and were able to serve Blockbuster's remaining customers.

They had a chance to become profitable and started taking away suscribers from netflix... there is a great podcast by Wondery on this https://youtu.be/qaDGUdJSlb0

BlockBuster made a killing on late fees. Netflix eliminated those.

If I push some buttons and it shows up later, and I didn't have to stand up to make it happen ... I'm pretty sure I can download toothpaste today. Latency isn't impressive, though.

It wasn't Netflix's streaming that killed Blockbuster, it was their DVD by mail service. Streaming was another nail in the coffin, but Netflix was already stealing Blockbuster customers with DVD's by mail subscriptions -- a much more convenient (and no late fees) way to rent movies.

My last Blockbuster rental was the time I forgot to return a Blockbuster movie before vacation, by the time I returned, the late fees were more than the price of the movie ($30 or $40 iirc). I never went back.

Blockbuster's problem was that I probably want a different movie every week. Walmart only carries n brands of pet food and they can buy extra knowing it'll sell sooner or later.

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