CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Renting,
also known as hiring or letting, is an agreement where a payment is made for
the temporary use of a good, service or property owned by another.
A video rental shop/store is a physical business
that rents home videos such as movies and prerecorded TV shows. Typically, a
rental shop conducts business with customers under conditions and terms agreed
upon in a rental agreement or contract, which may be implied, explicit, or
written. Many video rental stores also sell previously-viewed movies and/or
new, unopened movies. In the 1980s, video rental stores rented VHS and Beta]
tape copies of movies, although most stores dropped Beta tapes when VHS won the
format war. In the 2000s, video rental stores began renting DVDs, which
eventually displaced VHS. In the 2010s, video rental stores added high-definition
Blu-ray discs to their offerings. Video rentals are also offered in other
business such as drugstores or convenience stores.
The widespread availability of video on demand on
cable TV systems and VHS-by-mail services offered consumers a way of watching
movies without having to leave their home. With the advent of the World Wide
Web, Internet services such as Netflix have become increasingly popular since
the mid–2000s. All of these new ways of watching movies have greatly reduced
the demand for video rental shops
1.0 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Traditional film rental stores base their inventory
decisions on formulas using historical rental data, store size, and box office
sales among other factors. As titles become less popular, inventory can be
reduced by selling previously viewed copies to members for a low cost. Titles
that are out of stock are often compensated with coupons good for a free rental
when it is available again.
The film rental industry is an ever evolving
industry that changes with the economy, evolution of culture and technology and
to remain viable in the business, the clients must be willing to evolve. In the
entertainment industry, video or movies purchase and rentage has evolved
significantly since 1888 with the creating of an expert film titled “Roundhay
Garden Scene” created by Louis Le Prince and this film has remained the earliest
existing motion picture. The first home
movie was “Betamax” by the Sony Company in 1975 which was in fact very costly.
This was followed by Magnetic Video in November 1977.
George Atkinson was the first person to launch video
rental store in Los Angelis in December 1977 and the development continues. As
of march 2008 there were approximately 10,200 DVD vending kiosks in operation
across the USA with a market value of $198million represented through almost
double the number of DVD kiosks in operation as there are many stores currently
in America.
The growth of DVD vending as opined by David Drain,
former Executive Director of Self Service and Kiosks Association, The
potentials of automated DVD rental is tremendous because they are perfect for
high traffic, high frequency location such as grocery stores, restaurants,
Laundromats, apartment complexes, college campuses and airports
Reuters in 2008 highlighted the benefits of
automated DVD vending. They observed that consumers are constantly looking for
convenience, so, whoever offers that stands to gain market share.
Redbox, owned by Coinstar Inc. McDonald’s Corp and
private investor is the leader in the growing in-store kioss space, followed by
privately held TNR, which operates 2, 200 kioks. Others include Blockbusters,
Netfix, IMozi, MovieMate, MovieQ, MovieBooth, ThingMagic, etc.
In Nigeria today, Music and film rental, vending and
distribution will finally take a better shape if upcoming film rental agencies
make good their plans. SoForte Entertainment Distribution in collaboration with
Sony Music UK plans to be the first to make Nigerian music available whenever
there is a demand for it anywhere in the world. The company plans to roll out
the most advance distribution technology system this year. According to Mr.
Gbenga George, CEO of Soforte and an entertainment lawyer, amongst the things
to look out for this year is an automated CD/DVD vending machine easier to
operate than the popular ATM machine you see around today. These machines would
be deployed all around strategic places in Nigeria making CD/DVD purchase easy
for consumers. The good thing about this is that it guarantees original CD/DVD
sale which would in turn guarantee royalty payment to Artistes and labels, and
returns on investment to investors. Also, Soforte would introduce, for the
first time in Nigeria and perhaps Africa, Direct To Customer (DTC) purchase
service, to music buyers anywhere in Nigeria within 24hours.
Other upcoming automated film rental agencies in
Nigeria include, BUZZNETZ, who was able to initiate online film vending
1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
A
traditional film rental operation involves block and mortar stores located in
strategic locations and it is characterized by numerous VHS and DVD titles
being carted about by staffs. Members arrive at the location, make selections
from the available stock, pay for their section and return home to watch their
selection which spans through an agreed rental period. After the designated
rental period, the member returns his selection or incurs late fees, but in
carrying out this service ones business is operated just with in his location
and vicinity. Also, the process of the movie rental service is done manually,
which is tedious and stressful to the works or staff and the management.
The major problem associated with traditional film
rental agencies from the customers’ end is “dissatisfaction”. Customers’ get
frustrated after a long fruitless search of numerous inventories that waste
time. Customers unsuccessfully seeking a specific title generally leave with a
second or third choice. Other problems
include:
1. No updated information
available
2. Maintaining the
supplier information
3. Maintaining the sales
records
4. Maintaining the
supplier information
5. Problems on maintaining
the Payment
Therefore, a proposed system that can automate the
whole process is proposed, due to the issue in ground the research work is
necessitate to be carried out and that stands as the statement of the research
problem. The achievements of this research work will be discussed in the
objectives of the study and in chapter fours its evaluation.
1.3 PURPOSE
OF THE STUDY
In this study, we hope to develop an automated film
rental service with an online website or system application that will
1. Minimize all paper
works and manual records keeping, therefore allowing manager and staff ease in
keeping track of customers, inventory, rentals, sales, late fees, provide
quicker reservation.
2. Be user-friendly, time
effective and well-organized.
3. Establish a website
with a shopping cart and payment features which allows customers to point and
click their way through different products
4. Provide all information
about products and services in daily transaction
5. Bring about easy
ordering of films.
6. Comprise user friendly
navigation.
7. Allow for SMS
notification where it will automatically send sms to notify customers about the
product’s status with attached bill and other important announcements.
1.4 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
The aim of this project is to automate the film
rental operations in order to assist film rental operator to minimize labour
and facilities cost, thereby maximizing income. The main objective of this
project is to create a user friendly, unique and modern software package with
higher security facility (User levels, Password encryption). The specific
objectives are to
i.
Conduct literature review on automation of film
rental operations
ii.
Design a online/system app for video rentage service
iii.
Implement the design in (ii)
iv.
A deep investigation about the existing manual
system and their accessible process measurements.
v.
Testing the video rental system using available
accessible data.
vi.
Evaluate the final product and think about new ideas
to improve further development.
1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
This
project work will be covering the following features and functionality, due to
time limit and other constraint, this work will be strictly based on the listed
scopes and features.
1. A computerized system
for recoding rentals services (web-base/system app)
2. A shopping cart and
payment features for checking out point.
3. A detailed information
about products and services in daily transaction
4. An SMS notification for
reminders or rented movies to customers.
5. A system updates and
inventory reports for the management and staff of the movie rental service
store.
1.5
LIMITATION OF THE STUD
Inaccessibility to some documents,
which arose due to security, imposed on some of the organization documents by
the management. It was not also possible to make an in-dept study of these
documents, which would have helped in the development of the project work.
Time was a major limitation to this write up, there
wasn’t enough time to study the details of the various field of the information
department of the organization unavailability of textbook needed for this write
– up was not found in the institution library.
This study will not look in details the payment
section of the services, but will use an embedded service from the voupay
payment processing system for online payment in Nigeria.
1.6
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
The
study gave birth to a new strategic method of expanding ones business venture
and promote profits and cost management.
The success of this research work will significantly
have an impact to the protit management of ABS VIDEO RENTAL STORE Lagos Ikeja.
Also, this research work will serve as a reference material to the fellow
researcher, academic students and others as a reference study guide.
1.7
DEFINITION OF TERM
DATABASE: Database, is any collection of data
organized for storage in a computer memory and designed for easy access by
authorized users. The data may be in the form of text, numbers, or encoded
graphics
RENT: also known as hiring or letting, is an
agreement where a payment is made for the temporary use of a good, service or
property owned by another.
STORE: are where merchandise
is sold, usually a product, usually on a retail basis, and where wares are
often kept.
ONLINE: the terms
"online" and "offline" have specific meanings in regard to computer
technology and telecommunications in which "online" indicates a state
of connectivity, a state where one can reach out to another through that connectivity
and offer services to each other (business or otherwise) while
"offline" indicates a disconnected state, state where the connectivity
is no longer existing.
E-commerce: Generally refers to exchange of goods or
services over electronic system such as internet.
B2B: Refers to selling of products or services to
other businesses.
B2C: Refers to selling of product or services to end
consumers.
Credit card: it is a card entitling its holder to
buy goods and service from certain establishment.
Merchant: Refers to as organization (such as an MIT
department) accepting credit card payments for the goods or services they
provides.
Order ID: A unique identifier assigned to a customer
order in clear commerce.
Banner: An advertisement or image displayed on one
or more websites to attract visitors to your site.
Shopping cart: A wheeled cart for purchase of goods
in a store or supermarket.