Physical presence is valuable if used properly. Most stores aren't very inviting and it's hard to shop around for movies when you can only see the cover of the movie. The movie packaging doesn't tell you much.
Hm. An interesting idea is to have reviews of movies stickered on the cases.
"Hm. An interesting idea is to have reviews of movies stickered on the cases."
I don't have a Netflix subscription because I've been renting movies from the local mom-and-pop store near my apartment. It's employed by film-school-dropouts and they have hilarious comments stickered on the movies. It always affects my movie-renting decisions! A corporate hog like BB couldn't scale such mom-and-pop personalization, but reviews would be an excellent alternative.
I agree -- I'm just finishing up helping design a retail store for a new brand here in Calgary. With the right product/market mix, a retail store can be very profitable.
(Which is why it's good that Blockbuster is trying to change their retail model to something else -- "We have a physical store network that nobody can match, now let's figure out how to make money off it." It's just a shame that they haven't been able to take their eyes off those stores, so they've missed other opportunities..)
Hm. An interesting idea is to have reviews of movies stickered on the cases.