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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 TO 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.

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