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The U.S. motion picture industry has become increasingly reliant on posttheatrical channel profits. Two often-cited drivers of these profits are cross-channel substitution among posttheatrical channels and seasonality in consumer preferences for any movie. The authors use a differentiated products version of the multiplicative competitive interaction model to investigate these two phenomena. They estimate the model using data from 2000 and 2001 on two posttheatrical channels in the U.S. market: purchase and rental home viewing channels. Contrary to expectations based on business press commentary, after controlling for seasonality and movie attributes, the authors find low cross-channel price and availability elasticity for both channels. To measure the extent of cross-channel cannibalization, they simulate a 28-day window of sequential release with either purchase or rental channel going first. They find that windowing reduces the sum of revenues across both channels, because more consumers choose to not purchase or rent when faced with older movies in their favored channel rather than to switch to the alternative channel with newer movies.

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We study the market for new (movie) DVDs in the United States. Our demand model captures seasonality, freshness (i.e., time between theatrical and DVD release), and state dependence. We also develop a structural model of dynamic competition in which studios balance waiting for high-demand weeks, against reduced freshness, and against competitive crowding. We find that studios emphasize DVD revenues from larger movies (by theatrical revenue) over DVD revenues from smaller movies. Studios also emphasize revenue from consumers who prefer larger and fresher movies. These behaviors are consistent with managerial conservatism: studio executives forgo DVD revenues from smaller movies to ensure the DVD success of larger movies. This paper was accepted by J. Miguel Villas-Boas, marketing.