When Videocassette Recorders First Became Popular in the Mid-1980s, a New

question 80

Essay

When videocassette recorders first became popular in the mid-1980s, a new form of mom-and-pop (i.e., small) business sprang up across the country: the video rental store. At the time, new videotapes of popular movies cost anywhere from $80-$200, and as the popularity of videocassette recorders grew, these small, independent video rental stores grew rapidly to meet the demand of consumers for inexpensive rentals of movies. There was considerable competition among them to be the first to have expensive, new movies available for rental. However, some stores disappointed customers by not having enough copies of new films when they were most in demand, i.e., upon their initial release on video. Within about 5 to 8 years of competition, most of these mom-and-pop video rental stores were ultimately put out of business by the large regional and national chains such as Blockbuster. Using the concept of sustainable competitive advantage along with the four conditions required to produce it, explain how such a transition from hundreds of independent mom-and-pop video stores to a few national chains could have taken place so quickly.

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Definitions:

Amplitude

The extent or range of a variable wave, such as sound or light, often measured from the middle value to an extreme.

Pitch

A perceptual property of sounds that allows their ordering on a scale from low to high, primarily associated with the frequency of sound waves.

Loudness

A perceptual characteristic of sound that enables the differentiation of sounds on a scale from quiet to noisy, often measured in decibels.

Perceptual Adaptation

The ability of the body to adjust to an environment by filtering out distractions and adjusting to new stimuli.