Remember the days of watching big box retailers like a hawk to see if
more shelf space was being given to Blu-ray or HD DVD? Yeah,
epic times. Now, however, a new report is suggesting that Walmart may be giving more of its packaged media space to Blu-ray Discs rather than music CDs. The reason? A 23% decline in CD sales during the first four weeks of Q4. According to Richard Greenfield, analyst with Pali Capital, he believes that Wally World is "increasing its exposure to consumer electronics, video games and Blu-ray, and reducing floor space devoted to CDs and standard DVDs." Furthermore, it's bruited that John Fleming, chief marketing officer with Walmart, insinuated that "electronics would be getting space expansion in stores due to the
decline in physical packaged media." We'll be keeping an eye out to see if we spot any shifts in our local Walmart stores -- won't you do the same?
[Image courtesy of
TeamSugar]
posted Nov 3rd 2008 11:54PM
More Blu to steal!
http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/11/03/larcenists-get-a-cheap-blu-ray-player-the-illegal-way/
It's really about time they started carrying more Blu-ray discs.
I used to buy all of my dvd's at Wal-Mart, but since they've had such a dearth of selection I have been making my purchases at Best Buy.
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http://ROCKandREVIEW.com/
I definitely like the fact that they will offer more movies as I have a super Walmart very close to my house, the only thing with Walmart is that I don't think they are getting a lot of sales as it is. Most of the stores having Blu-Ray are mostly super centers and even those were pretty limited with selection. They had only 2 isles with the players in the middle adn their pricing was not really less expensive then Best Buy.
It's a good try to expose HD to more people but I don't think it will have any significance overall for Blu-Ray considering that most people who shop there at this time simply can't afford $25-$30 movies.
But I guess time will tell.
I've had my Blu-Ray player since June and I still haven't bought one single BD disk at a local retailer, they're just too, too much. I do all my BD buying on either Amazon or ebay, no taxes on top of the price, plus orders over $25 have free shipping with Amazon. So no business for either Wal Mart or Best Buy from me, seems like Best Buy is way, way more expensive, like $8 difference with Amazon.
I gave up shopping at our local wal-mart blu-ray section. They have empty cases on the floor, and make you ask a busy cashier to go get it from the back. Not only does it take forever but it wastes time from checking people out. This is a busy time of year.
Even worse at Sam's Club. The company decided that video games and Blu-ray discs were a high theft risk and should be replaced by pictures in plastic holders. Problem is the pictures come out of the stores budget, so store management doesn't place any emphasis on getting them printed out. The result is most disks and games don't even get displayed, on top of the wait for them to dig them out of lock up. Ironically nothings done to prevent the highest theft item; SD DVD's.
Headline doesn't match article. Article says Walmart is reducing shelf space for CDs (and DVDs) and MIGHT be able to use that space for Blu-ray. That seems a bit of a stretch - DVD sales are falling faster than Blu-ray can grow (ie there is an overall drop in sales of movie discs of any description)
They may still do it anyway, BD has nowhere to go but up (albeit slowly) at this point, but I'm sure Walmart has other things to sell.
WOW! Awesome news for Blu! CD sales are in the tank, so Wal-Mart is going to re-allocate shelf space from something they KNOW has declining sales to something that has growing sales.
Of course if their prices remain the same (higher than pretty much everywhere else) and ElevatorHappyFun's experience is anything to go on, then I'm not sure if this is good or not.
The Wal-Marts around me have their BDs in those annoying plastic boxes. It makes it unattractive when browsing the discs. I hope they get rid of those.
The article is misleading. The CDs have already been reduced and have been for some time being replaced already by oversized gaming stock (Rock Band/Guitar Hero/DDR/etc.) and the SD DVD stock which is being reduced is the stuff that is often piled in bins and shelves located in the isles, not the most likely place to put merchandise which is easy to steal and not cheap for what it is. Wal-Mart shows no signs of increasing support of Blu-ray, at least they finally took down the advisement filers telling people buying HDTVs to buy an upconverter too, Wal-Mart’s employees seem to be very lazy when taking stock of what they have on the shelves and often Blu-ray which is in stock, as pointed out by another user, often isn't on the shelves, and on top of that they often either use lock display cases or security covers on their Blu-ray discs making it an even bigger inconvenience for the customer, both require dealing with the CS in Electronics and having to check out in the back quite often.
retailers really need to start pushing and giving more space to blu-ray. if they dont they will open the door to digital distribution. additionally, they need to make the prices a little more competitive with DVD and online stores. they will really shoot themselves in the foot if they dont do these things soon.
You think the hold up for Blu-ray is the retailers? The retailers are allotting the amount of space they feel that Blu-ray deserves based on their sales of the product, this is true with all products. They are discounting Blu-ray as much as they can afford to and still make a profit on the product also. The retailers aren't shooting themselves in the foot, it is BDA and Blu-ray in general that is doing the shooting.
Yeah, I doubt there's much of a margin on the BD for the retailers to just lower prices across the board. Their has to be a change on the BDA and studios' part to cut margins.
Their advantage over digital distribution, for now, is that they're better quality. If they could add "less expensive" to that list (without sacrificing quality, of course), then they would really increase their market-share...especially since DD prices are still pretty high. I think they could still have a fair margin and be less expensive than DD. Bottom line: they have to have more advantages than "better quality" to beat out DD...
The reason for the potential change has more to do with the larger mark-up of BD comapred to CD, IMHO.
Nothing wrong with that.
My local Wal-Mart has not given Blu-Ray more space yet, but it is certainly trying to get rid of DVD's at a cheap price.