The trap of marginal thinking

The Trap of Marginal Thinking
In the United States, in the late 1990s, Blockbuster dominated the movie rental industry. It had stores all over the country, a significant size advantage, and what appeared to be a stranglehold on the market. Blockbuster had made huge investments in its inventory for all its stores. But, obviously, it didn't make money from movies sitting on the shelves; it was only when a customer rented a movie, and a clerk scanned the movie out of the store,that Blockbuster made anything.It therefore needed to get the customer to watch the movie quickly,and then return it quickly,so that the clerk could rent the same DVD to different customers again and again.To prod customers to return the DVDs quickly,the company levied big fines for every day that the customer forgot to return the DVD on time-if Blockbuster didn't, it wouldn't make money,because the DVD would be sitting in a customer's home rather than be rented to someone else.It didn't take long before Blockbuster realized that people didn't like returning movies, so it increased late fees so much that analysts estimated that 70 percent of Blockbuster's profits were from these fees.
边缘思维的陷阱
在美国，20世纪90年代末，百视达主宰了电影租赁业。它在全国各地都有商店，规模的优势非常显著，显然垄断了市场。百视达对其所有商店的库存进行了巨额投资。但是，很明显，架子上的电影不能赚钱；只有当顾客租了一部电影，一个店员把电影扫描出店，对百视达来说才有意义。因此，它需要让客户快速看完电影，然后快速归还，以便店员可以一次又一次地将同一张DVD租给不同的客户。为了促使顾客尽快归还DVD，公司对忘记按时归还DVD的顾客，每一天都收高额罚款——如果百视达不这样做，就不会赚到钱，因为DVD还放在顾客家里，而不是租给另外的人。没过多久，百视达就意识到人们不喜欢归还电影带，因此它大幅提高了滞纳金，分析师估计百视达70%的利润来自这些滞纳金。