影音王國百視達如何開拓台灣市場及其影響

林珊珊　林玉梅　陳麒任

With the rising of the videotape and rental stores, many people no longer consider it efficient to go to a movie theater to see movies. As a result, watching movies at home has become a major past-time that people do in their leisure time. Blockbuster, as the biggest chain video rental stores, came to Taiwan in 1997 and produced a great impact on the video rental market of Taiwan. The present paper aims to explain how Blockbuster expanded and its influence on other routers in Taiwan.

Blockbuster opened its first store in Dallas in 1985. During the following ten years, Blockbuster kept opening branches in Europe, South America, Australia and Japan. In 1997, Blockbuster, which had been acquired by Viacom in 1994, advanced to Taiwan and opened 22 branches within a year. Then, Blockbuster moved its Asia headquarter to Taiwan in 1998 and Taiwan became the eighth largest market overseas. At this moment, there are 101 Blockbusters in total in Taiwan.

No doubt, the main reason that enables Blockbuster to assume the leading role in Taiwan’s movie routers is its management, including convenient services, rationalized operation, market expansion, and aggressive marketing:

Convenient services

To satisfy different customers and to save customers’ time on selecting and renting, Blockbuster classifies and labels films clearly. Besides, differing from the traditional rental system, Blockbuster supplies smart cards (IC added value cards) and 24-hour returning boxes for its customers. The former brought upon a new film-renting model for the Taiwanese market as the latter eliminates waiting time for returning films. Blockbuster also sells additional products, such as foods, soft drinks popcorns, and magazines to complete the whole video consumption experience, and saves customers’ time on buying snacks.

Rationalized operation

To better control the circulation of films and the business all over the world, Blockbuster develops a computer-linking system and uses bar codes effectively to speed up each rental and return.

Market expansion

Unlike traditional rental stores, Blockbuster does not collect deposits when people sign up to become members so as to expand its market. Blockbuster did not accept franchises until 2001, and franchises are limited to those remote locations where operating costs would high if Blockbuster was to run the businesses itself. Thus, on the one hand, Blockbuster can raise its market share by selling franchises; on the other hand, it can provide services to a larger consumption population and still carries out the goal of localization.

Aggressive Marketing

The brightly-lit shop floor with its efficient space arrangement creates a different impression for customers. And Blockbuster holds annual “Blockbuster Entertainment Awards” to boost its popularity. Furthermore, the promotion of new films on TV and sponsoring related activities are also benefiting Blockbuster’s public image.

After Blockbuster’s entry, all of the movie routers in Taiwan are influenced to a more or lesser degree. Some have folded their businesses; others have learned to adapt in order to fight. Imitating the space design and management of Blockbuster is the main strategy. Take wan-shi-ton(萬視通) and Deltamac(得利影視數位聯盟) for example, the former adopts the franchising idea and the latter adopts the alliance idea.

In the future, in order to face up to the challenge of the digitalization of cable TV in Taiwan, Blockbuster plans to cooperate with cable TV channels, and they will provide pay-per-view movies delivered through an alliance model and they will become a new distribution channel for cable TV.