Blockbuster’s Electronic Networks

Electronic networks are pervasive many companies at presently and are used to aid in efficiently running the company. Electronic networks are defined by John Seely Brown in two ways, “First, they help deal with cascades of information that many people find so threatening. Second, they promise to handle many intricate human tasks.” (Brown, Duguid 2002 p. 36). These electronic networks are made up of agents that perform many actions. As a frequent movie watcher, I am a subscriber to Blockbuster’s online movie rental program as well as a member at my local brick and mortar store. I will detail some of the agents in use by blockbuster and offer some suggestions for agents which would improve the overall experience of renting movies from Blockbuster.

Blockbuster currently uses an agent which deals with the complex amounts of information regarding my movie ratings, and comparing them with similarly rated movies, and looking at the movies they also rate highly in order to provide recommendations to me. The problem with these agents is that they understand the rules but cannot impart judgment into a decision which results in a weakness for the overall electronic network (Brown, Duguid 2002 p. 53). These problems trouble all recommendation systems currently in use, and companies are actively pursuing new methods for recommendation agents. Netflix, Blockbuster’s competitor, has even offered a reward for a member of the general public who creates a new and improved recommendation method. This is similar to Goldcorp’s method of finding new gold deposits by sharing company intellectual property (Tapscott, Williams 2006 p. 10). The Netflix contest has already resulted in many entires, many of which are already improving on Netflix’s recommendation system by more than 6%.

Blockbuster also uses an agent as part of their brick and mortar store to let customers know when they have overdue movies. The agent is similar to the chatterbot described in The Social Life of Information with the information supplied by a store rather than by a chatting customer (Brown, Duguid 2002 p. 36). The agent isn’t perfect in that is will sometimes call a renter after the movie has been returned, however it performs its task well and negates the need for a human to remind someone that a movie is late. This system is also backed by a postcard system to inform users if they have a movie which is close to the purchase point of a late fee.

One part of an electronic network which would be beneficial for Blockbuster to add would be an agent or process in the system which reconciles in store rentals with the online rental history of a user. This would perform several functions the most important being the removal of in store rentals from the rental queue, in order to avoid duplicates reaching the customer. Another added benefit would be for the recommendation system to view a larger rental history which is actually a twofold benefit. A new system could look at movies rented but not rated and some calculation could be performed on that, the history could also be used to prompt the user to rate more movies hence improving the overall recommendation system.

The use of agents at Blockbuster as parts of their electronic network have improved both the customer service by providing recommendations, and the efficiency of Blockbuster by automating many tasks and handling complex datasets. Without these networks it would be very difficult for blockbuster to contend in the online movie rental system.

References:

Tapscott, Don, Wikinomics, Portfolio (Penguin Press), New York 2006.

Brown, S. J. and Duguid, P. The Social Life of Information, Harvard Business School Publishing