Digital Delivery

It was announced that Wal-Mart will be selling digital downloads of all of the major movie companies movies. This comes on the heals of a weekend where movies saw a decline from the previous year of 12 percent. The motion picture companies are finally discovering that they have a vast inventory why not make it easy for people to get at it in other ways. Putting that aside for a second though let's look at if this makes sense for Wal-Mart.



Wal-Mart is the world's retail sales giant. You either love them or hate them so obviously if they are getting into this there must be money in it right? Well here lies the "Long-Tail" theory. Movies that are new releases will cost you almost as much a if you went down to Wal-Mart and bought the DVD, so then they are going after the user who may want to download the older movies as it will be more cost effective. In my opinion Wal-Mart is going after a different customer with this venture than they get in their average store. In order to succeed with this they will have to bring web viewers to their pages which Wal-Mart currently does not do a very good job of. Why would I want to look at their site when I can go down the street and get it for cheaper. That is where HP supposedly comes in. They reportedly have been hired to optimize and change Wal-Mart's digital movie area into a better experience.

I think that this recognition in digital download model change by both Wal-Mart and the motion picture companies is a good start. Wal-Mart has to somehow bring people to their website though in order for this to succeed.


Oh yeah and this little jewel:

Sales for the top 12 films fell 12 percent to $71.6 million from a year earlier. Sales have fallen 3 percent to $779.8 million this year from a year earlier, while attendance has decreased 5.2 percent.