[legitster]

> Blockbuster is what killed off the mom and pop stores

Is there a source for this? Usually, both rise and fall together with consumer demand. When I grew up, Blockbuster was one of a dozen options in town.

As an example, there are more independent coffee shops today than before Starbucks expanded.

[bombcar]

Starbucks grew the "expensive coffee" market, and so independents had a niche to slip into (expensive, but not Starbucks) - Blockbuster did nothing to grow the "rental movie" market, and a given market in an area is roughly limited to the number of houses in said market.

People drink less office/gas station coffee than they used to, and so can drink more Starbucks/independent coffee. The same didn't happen to the mom and pop video rental places (though the ones that survived blockbuster, usually by being in a market too small to support a Blockbuster, often outlived them (the one near me closed a few years ago finally)).

[omar_alt]

I distinctively remember around 1994 two family run stores in the UK town I grew up in disappearing and the reason was the same, Blockbuster.

I didn’t play games much but I recall them also renting out Japanese nintendo games and also sold the necessary cartridge converters to play Starfox.

[ars]

> the reason was the same, Blockbuster.

The "name" of the reason might be Blockbuster, but the actual reason was that Blockbuster had a larger selection. Those mom and pop stores were really small, so if you wanted something else you had to go to Blockbuster anyway, so why bother dealing with more than one store even for the stuff they had? Just get everything at Blockbuster.

It's the same with retail stores - I don't go to the small stores, even if they might have what I want - why should I? I can go to the larger store and get everything and not have to think about it.

[acheron]

Yeah that's how I remember it too. In one town we lived in, we always got videos from the independent place. My main memory of Blockbuster is that one time my parents went there instead, and they gave us the wrong movie, which my sister and I were very disappointed by.

In another town we lived in, the video rental place was a local chain with fewer than 10 locations, maybe just around 5. I don't remember if a Blockbuster even existed locally.

[LegitShady]

the wikipedia article for blockbuster contains a quote/source about this (search it for "mom and pop") but the citation no longer exists due to link rot.

essentially blockbuster operated at larger scales than many small video businesses and so had smaller unit costs while also having more selection.