Few consumers trash disc packaging
Videogamers are twice as likely as DVD owners to sell or trade
By Danny King -- Video Business, 10/28/2008
OCT. 28 | Consumers consider DVD and videogame packaging a part of the product and generally store their DVDs and games in the original packaging, according to a study by NPD Group for the Entertainment Merchants Assn. and the Content Delivery and Storage Assn.
The trade organizations set out to determine how consumers view DVD and videogame packaging and whether they keep or dispose of packaging.
"In packaged home entertainment, consumers view the packaging cases as part of the product and not something to be tossed," EMA CEO Bo Andersen said in the statement.
Consumers overwhelmingly store their DVDs (89%) and videogames (88%) in the original cases, the study found. Few people, 5% of DVD owners and 8% of videogame owners, store their discs in plastic sleeves but keep the cases, the survey said. About the same percentage of consumers said they throw away or recycle the cases.
When they no longer want a title, videogame owners are twice as likely to either trade or resell their discs as owners of DVDs, according to EMA and CDSA. Among DVD owners, 45% of people will give away an unwanted title, while just 27% will sell or trade it. Videogamers will give away titles just 24% of the time, while 54% said they would trade or sell an unwanted game. About a fifth of each group simply store the discs, EMA said.
Games retailers such as GameStop have tried to take advantage of the growing used-games market, estimated by some analysts at well over $1 billion annually, by letting customers trade in older titles, while Internet marketplaces such as eBay have made it easier for DVD owners to sell or trade older titles.
Meanwhile, industry efforts to encourage disc recycling doesn't appear to have much of an effect. Less than 5% of both videogame and DVD owners either recycle or throw away their unwanted discs, choosing to either sell them, give them away or keep them, according to the EMA.
The average DVD-owning household has 114 discs, while gamers owned 48 titles, EMA said. About a quarter of DVD owners had unopened discs, while about one in 10 gamers had games that hadn't been opened.
