Blockbuster-Strategic Recommendations

Blockbuster needs to realize that it is operating in an entirely new age where the mode of application of a product as opposed to product value matters most (Ferrell, 2007). With advancement in technology, it is becoming increasingly important that businesses use technology to serve their clients better. On this basis, the company needs to have a set of strategic plans to cater for the tech-savvy public. One recommendation for the firm is to have its movies downloadable onto modern devices like the TiVo.

Although there is an attempt at doing this so far, the number of Blockbuster movies currently available in HD on TiVo is too little – hardly over 26! And yet the TiVo is the increasingly becoming the device of choice for many people not just in this country but elsewhere as well (Ferrell, 2007). The issue here is that many clients might not be able to access its stores to rent movies. Instead, they need to have unlimited access to those movies from any point in the world at any time. Therefore, Blockbuster ought to make all its movies downloadable into as many appliances as possible.

It needs to put the movies into a form that can be reached by the majority of the people and by the different market segments it has. The young are especially tech-savvy and will appreciate if Blockbuster can make its movies available in forms that can, for instance, be played on the latest Mac books, iPads, iPods, iTunes and other devices. It is only through such a strategy that it can counter Netflix’s dominance of the market (Ferrell, 2007). What makes this a more urgent need is that Blockbuster is lately focusing on rentals of brand new movie releases for its rentals.

If anything is new, it ought to come packaged in new ways as well and be made available in new forms and new applications. This brings in the recommendation that Blockbuster ought not to be so focused on new movie rentals before it can make the old rentals available in the forms and appliances most desirable to customers. This is because even if the company had all the available hit movies in its stores where a majority of the customers cannot get their hands on it pays nothing having them. Blockbuster had better put tits products in the form most acceptable to clients before it can think of diversifying those products.

Another digital recommendation for Blockbuster is to apply itself to the use of the T-mobile technology this is a digital solution that can allow for the downloading and viewing of movies from handheld mobile phones so that users can watch movies on the move. The HTC HD2 Smartphone that allows users to download full-length movies via Wi-Fi can be a revolutionary move for the company (Ferrell, 2007). It can serve as a real turning point in its digital offering strategy. However, there are various challenges to it; the main one being that not all customers might love to have full-length movies downloaded to their mobile phones.

On this it will be ideal for the company to select a few movies for use on this device, probably the shorter ones, so that it there will be no need for too long movies to be downloaded to such phones. Then there is the challenge of there being too few of these phones. To overcome this, Blockbuster ought to collaborate more with makers of these devices in a similar manner that it is collaborating with TiVo. Word count: 585 Reference Ferrell, O. C. (2007). Marketing Strategy. Cengage Learning