Serving a niche market

By 2002, the upstart was showing signs of potential. It had $150 million in revenues and a 36 percent profit margin.Blockbuster investors were starting to get nervous-there was clearly something to what Netflix was doing. Many pressured the incumbent to look more closely at the market.
So Blockbuster did. When it compared Netflix's numbers to its own,
Blockbuster's management concluded,“Why would we bother?” The market Netflix was pursuing was smaller; it might get bigger, but it was unclear how big it had the potential to be.More troubling for Blockbuster's management,though,was that Netflix's profit margins were substantially smaller than what Blockbuster was used to.And if Blockbuster did decide to attack Netflix, and if it were successful, those efforts would most likely cannibalize sales from Blockbuster's very profitable stores.“Obviously, we pay attention to any way people are getting ho me entertainment.We always look at all those things,”is how a Blockbuster's spokesperson responded to these concerns in a 2002 press release."We have not seen a business model that is financially viable in the long term in this arena.Online rental services are ‘serving a niche market.'”
到2002年，这个新贵开始显露出潜力。它的收入为1.5亿美元，毛利36%。百视达投资者开始紧张起来——网飞的所作所为显然很蹊跷。许多人向现任者施压，要求其更密切地关注市场。
百视达做了。但当百视达将网飞的数据与自己的进行对比时，管理层得出结论，“我们为什么要担心？”网飞市场很小，有可能变大，但不清楚网飞有多大的潜力。然而，更让百视达管理层头疼的是，网飞的利润率远低于百视达过去的水平。如果百视达真的决定进攻网飞，如果它成功了，这些努力很可能会蚕食百视达利润丰厚的商店的销售额。“显然，我们关注人们家庭娱乐的任何方式。我们关注所有这些事情，”这是百视达的发言人在2002年的新闻发布会上对这些问题的回应。“对于在线租赁领域，我们还没有看到长期可盈利的商业模式。它只服务于很小的市场。'"