Technology Planning - Blu-Ray Versus Hd-Dvd?

1. What factors do you think influenced whether a) consumers, b) retailers, or c) movie producers

supported Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD?

1a) Consumer requirements…what exactly is the consumer looking for in a high definition video? Requirements allow consumers to set the baseline of what they are looking for when purchasing a product to differentiate between wants and needs. The notion of brand loyalty rings a bell here as well. In my personal life, I am a huge advocate of Amazon.com for most of my shopping needs even if my product costs a little more than other sites. I have brand loyalty with this company, and will likely support anything they offer due to my confidence and appreciation for Amazon’s customer service alone. Consumers influenced the support of Blu-ray based on brand loyalty- confidence and relationship with the Sony brand. Dominant design has to do with actual content not the technology itself.

1b) From the perspective of retailers, they preferred to adopt the product that would suit most consumer needs and alignment with market positioning trends and inventory needs. Being responsible for two additional products in their inventory would require more licensing costs, purchasing costs, and shelving space at a minimum. The 2 different formats would affect the production costs- a key service operations management concept which involves leveling. Lastly, the retailer has to consider balancing the working relationships with Sony and Toshiba. I don’t think retailers wanted to be involved in war between the two standards and have to provide guidance to consumers on which one to purchase from a formatting perspective instead of quality and capability perspective.

1c) Movie producers would follow the market consumptions of the consumers and retailers. The consumers are actually purchasing these products and the retailers are selling them. If there is more pull for Blu-Ray for HD-DVD, movie producers will take this into consideration when determining how to best solicit their movies for sale. I think they would consider whether or not there’s added value in distributing via either of these formats given the households audiences of their movies (i.e. cartoons vs. western cinema)

2. Why do you think Toshiba and Sony would not cooperate to produce a common standard?

In this chapter we study dominant