Is this surprising? Well, I personally stopped renting movies from Blockbuster since the DVD came out. Back in my country (El Salvador) all Blockbuster stores closed about 7 years ago. The reason why Blockbuster is choosing to close all of their remaining stores I believe revolves around the idea of the technology era taking over. Ever since the DVD came out, Blockbuster took some time while switching from the video cassettes to DVD’s. What hit this firm was how quickly the technological changes and this affected the quantity demanded of their product, therefore their supply surpassed the quantity demanded and created a surplus of service and products which eventually created a debt. (In 2012 they had $1 billion of assets and $1.46 billion in debt)
Closing all of their stores will benefit the company because instead of creating more of a debt, they will leave the market. However, at the same time, this will involve laying off 2,800 of their employees therefore increasing unemployment. As far as I am concerned, they are not offering these workers any other job opportunities. This means that overall the decision of closing the stores satisfies them but not the country.
