Maynard Consulting

The rumors continue to fly.  VOD and downloading are supposed to be the harbingers of doom for DVD.  But there certainly aren’t any corpses for the vultures yet.  Why?  Because there may not be any truth to it.

DVD on its own may be slowing down naturally; after all, DVD has been in commercial release for 12 years now.  While DVD sales are definitely down, there isn’t any evidence to suggest that a preference for VOD or downloading is the cause of it.

“…more people are still buying DVDs than streaming or downloading content, according to NPD Group research.

When NPD asked people about their home entertainment purchases over the past three months, 48% of respondents said they bought a DVD or Blu-ray Disc. That compares to 2% who downloaded a movie or TV episode, and 2% who digitally rented a movie or TV show. In videogames, about one-third of respondents said they bought packaged software for a console, and fewer than 5% said they had digitally downloaded a game.”

http://www.videobusiness.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleID=CA6634522

Customers love it, but it’s a poison pill for small businesses.  We don’t offer it.  Never have, never will.

Curt Barry, a writer for Multichannel Merchant magazine, published an article titled Paying for free shipping and handling.  Here is an excerpt:

When you look at what mailers are charging and giving to the customer for a higher than average order, it looks like a significant inducement on the surface.

But the success rate among our clients in the use of free shipping varies widely, and the shipping and processing offset that you have to give up is very expensive in a time when sales are soft anyway. Most of the merchants we talked to aren’t convinced free S&H is working.

Here is a link to the full article.

Here is a PDF of the sample data.