Critique on "The Rise of Netflix, the Demise of Blockbuster"

In the article of "The Rise of Netflix, the Demise of Blockbuster" the writer stated the change in new business techniques for the movie rental industry that companies such as Netflix, Hulu, and RedBox have picked up on. These days, you no longer have to drive all the way to a movie rental store such as Blockbuster to pick up the desired movie you want to watch. The movie you want to watch can come right to your house on either your TV or computer. Nothing beats watching your favorite movies with a few clicks of a button while sitting on your couch. Blockbuster stayed with their same business techniques that has almost put them completely out of business.

Everyone remembers Blockbuster had stores on the side of the roads in almost every town you happened to be in. As the years went on Netflix launched their company in 2003 which runs from the internet, RedBox's started appearing infront of local grocery stores all over the nation, and Hulu is another internet ran company. Blockbuster did not give in and follow these companies techniques and started losing much of their money.

The writer stated that companies like Netflix started because of Blockbuster's outrageous late fee's. A man named Reede Hastings started the company and went with a no late fee policy. Many people did not like Blockbuster's late fees which generated $300 million in profits annually. Later on, Blockbuster took away late fees and ended up losing even more money. In 2010 they brought back the late fees and it still did not help. No matter what Blockbuster did, they could not keep up with the newer companies.

I agree with this writers post that if a company does keep improving their business techniques and up to date then they will not succeed in later years. I think a company constantly needs to be thinking of bigger and better ways to improve. The writer quoted the famous economist Ludwig Von Mises and he said, "if a business is unsuccessful, it is often because they failed the consumer." I agree with that quote because I think Blockbuster failed the consumer by not keeping things up to date. As technology grows, things become easier and easier for us. Blockbuster did not keep up with times and stuck with their time consuming ways of movie rentals. Netflix, Hulu, and RedBox stepped in and figured out a way to make movie rentals easy for the consumer and less time consuming. In order for a company to succeed, they need to constantly be thinking of ways how they can improve the product they are selling or how they can keep the consumers happy or even make them even happier.