Warner Brothers Company recently announced its decision to pull all Harry Potter DVDs from store shelves after Dec. 29. The company will re-release the DVDs, including the final installment in the series, periodically through the foreseeable future.
The company is just one of many with this profit strategy. Corporate giant Disney has been using this marketing system with their movies for years, particularly with the classics. The company rereleases the classics “from the vault” for a temporary period of time. They then pull the DVDs, restructure and reissue them.
This type of careful strategy almost tears the magic away from these films. These are the types of movies that every parent strives to have in their collection. And children want these movies available to them as well.
Actually, college students do too. Making them difficult to obtain in order to build demand and a higher profit is almost deplorable.
Let’s think about how large both Disney and Warner Brothers are as companies. They both have a hand in literally every marketable aspect of adolescent interest— music, clothing, accessories, books, television, concerts and a slew of other paraphernalia. Movies are just one of many forms of income for these business hounds.
The need to remove these DVDs from shelves can be attributed to nothing but greed. While maintaining a strong business strategy and profiting for the future are highly important to business, especially today, these companies have taken it to a new level. They are family companies, and as such, they should be mindful of their customers. They instead seem to be neglecting them in favor of more money.
This is not to say that other companies have lacked this motive in the past. This trend has been observable for years. It is just difficult to understand that the very companies who provide viewers with magic do it with their wallets in mind.
