The Ultimate Movie Paradox ? RedBox vs Downloads | Hacker News Reader

The Ultimate Movie Paradox ? RedBox vs Downloads

blogmaverick.com

22 pointspeter1238 comments

I thought part of the value of RedBox was in driving store traffic. Maybe you'd go to the grocery store once a week to buy groceries, but if you're also grabbing $1/day videos from them, you'll come back sooner to return your video. And while you're there, maybe you buy more groceries - and if you pick up a new video that time too, you'll be back again.

It was originally conceived by McDonald's for exactly that reason. Does anyone know if redbox pays to be placed in stores, or vice-versa? I'd love to know if they're subsidized for the traffic they bring to stores. That's something netflix can't do.

That seems kind of odd as eating, and thus obtaining food, is usually its own purpose. I'm not sure treating the entire grocery store as an impulse purchase is entirely bankable; additionally, what would the impulse buys at the register be then? Meta-impulse buys?

When I was poking around to figure out what redbox's deal is, I found this link (http://www.paylessforfood.com/tag/redbox-videos/) which suggests that almost the majority of grocery store purchases are impulse buys. I'm not suggesting that while you're returning your video that you'll buy bread, milk, eggs, &c. surplus to your normal weekly shopping, but you might remember "Oh, I wanted to get some bananas" or the like. And while you get those, you spot the yogurt-covered pretzels that look tasty, so you grab those too. Voila, more sales.

While the term "almost the majority" is just another way to say "the minority", I do agree there is some truth to this. I just came from from the grocery store, and of the $65 I spent, $25 of it was stuff that wasn't on my list that (but that I usually buy) that I'd qualify as impulse.

Sounds to me like the movie distributors should cut the middle man the way Fox cut out the middle man with Hulu.

1) Why doesn't he do it, if it's so "easy"?

2) If someone started doing this wouldn't all the big players just ante up and play the same game?

So, if online movie purveyors actually followed this advice, would this kill the long tail of movies that are only profitable on consignment?

It depends. It's not uncommon to have clauses like "if you want W, the top grossing summer action flick, you have to also support carry X, Y, and Z crappy comedies".

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