Not against the customers, but against the parent company?
Background: One of the video stores I occasionally go to has really been pushing the candy. A while ago I had a ton of late fees, like in the 30 dollar range. The counter guy said “oh, come back next time and the manager will let you buy like 10 bucks worth of candy and clear out your late fees”.
So next time I go in, I buy 10 bucks worth of candy and the late fees go away.
The NEXT time I go in, I rent 1 movie, and buy 2. The counter person tells me “you can get a free candy combo with your rental”. It’s like a 2.99 candy combo, with 2 popcorns, a drink, and one candy. The guy scans in all the candy along with the movies, charges me 14-something (2 vids I bought were 5 a piece), and hands me my stuff without a reciept or having me sign anything. I suspect they might be charging for the candy combo, and not charging for the rental. Do stores get a higher margin on candy than they do with rentals and late fees?
I have no interest in getting involved if they are pulling some sort of scam between one department or franchise or whatever… I just like to rent movies. But I am curious what is going on here because I’ve never seen this sort of thing at many of the other video stores I frequent.
When I was working at a video store, there was a lot of pressure from corporate to sell candy, presumably because the margin on candy is huge. In any case, we were pretty much given a quota we had to fill. If we didn’t, the store lost hours it could alot to workers, basically making the whole store go to hell because it was already extremely understaffed. The amount of pressure managers are under from corporate managment in these places are increadable. I’ve seen a few of them break down and actually go crazy from the stress.
Basically, their business is no longer economically viable, and corporate makes that the problem of individual store managers. This puts them in a position where they actually cannot do what they need to do, and so they end up doing sketchy things like you encountered. I wouldn’t get involved. These people are already going to go through enough hassels before they smarten up and get out.
I worked at a cinema once in England where the manager got a commission off of popcorn,icecream and sweets(U.S. candy) but nothing off of ticket sales so that when there was a big movie on he would pull off most of the usherettes from collecting tickets to sell the stuff.
The local yobbos soon picked up on this and made a point of getting in without a ticket at these times and being yobbos amused themselves by throwing things,starting fights etc.
This was not good for me as it was part of my job to jump in and separate people in fights and throw them out and it was not good for bussiness because it put people off from going to the movies.
The little shit used to lock himself in his office "To safeguard the takings"when there were gang fights leaving me and the projectionists to sort it out,the police coincidently always seemed to arrive just after we’d stopped the trouble ourselves,we were of the opinion that they’d post a spotter to report back to them on when it was safe to arrive.
Alright, I now kind of want to know how the video store business model actually works. I just assumed that they’d buy the individual dvds for whatever they cost, and after 3-4 rentals they’d be paid for.
If I am not mistaken, the DVDs they buy (for new movies before they are sold to the general public) are much more than what you would pay for them when they become available, thus making it much more than a few rentals before they are covered. At least this is how it used to work. With the new method of releasing movies to multiple locations (theatre, rental, purchase) at the same time I am unsure.
When I worked for Suncoast, now defunct, we had to sell “loyalty smart solutions” and “profit smart solutions” if we wanted to keep our jobs. “Loyalty smart solutions” were the respectable things that make business sense - loyalty cards, special orders, reservations. Profit smart solutions were things the store gets a kickback on - Entertainment Weekly, batteries (oh, batteries!), poster frames, storage, Disc Doctors. So if you wondered why Suncoast or any other Best Buy company desperately wants you to buy Entertainment Weekly, well, that’s why.
I’m going with even sven in this case. I’ve seen corporate offices do stupid goals that were unrealistic and if not circumvented end in the stores closing.
That’s not the case anymore. Blockbuster and Netflix (and perhaps others) have licensing deals with most of the studios. They get the DVDs for free (or at significant discounts) and pay the studios a percentage of revenues. That has been the model for about ten years.
Blockbuster has tried several different strategies to stay afloat, but they’re facing challenges on three different fronts. For a frequent renter, Netflix is usually more convenient and offers a substantially larger catalog. For the less frequent renter, Blockbuster is facing a big challenge from Redbox. Redbox now has more locations, doesn’t require a membership, and offers movies for a lower price. And of course there is Amazon Unbox offering digital downloads, which everyone acknowledges is the model that will eventually predominate.
Blockbuster has tried to compete on all three fronts, offering their own “by-mail” program, adopting a $0.99/day price tier, and tip-toeing into the business of streaming video. Ultimately, I don’t think they can compete with any of these three models in the long run because of the fixed costs associated with running brick and mortar stores. The only thing they can do that the other three can’t is to sell other physical products, like candy and soda. Maybe that buys them an extra six months, but they’re not going to be around for much longer.