"Netflix doesn’t want you to remember “Qwikster”, it wants you to forget DVDs."-theMattSmith
You could be on to something. However, I don’t think Netflix is as clever as you seem to think they are. It’s muuuuch cheaper to just start ignoring their DVD service and focus on their streaming. Trademarking a new brand, separating out their DVD service/website from their current website/service and confusing the crap out of their customers and potential customers is not cost-effective at all and is also a huge risk. If this theory is correct, and they are trying to get us to forget about DVDs, I think Netflix is still damned because they are spending way too much money on this whole thing and pissing a lot of people off in the process.
If it were me, I’d just:
1) rename the two services to “Netflix DVD” and “Netflix Now” and give them both their own department.
2) slowly drop resources/staff/titles from the Netflix DVD service and increase resources/staff/titles to the Netflix Now service. This would happen over the span of years. This would minimize the “drama” aspect of these changes (along with any negative interpretation to these choices) and ease customers and potential customers into the idea of only streaming.
3) keep prices as stable as possible. In today’s economy changing costs (whether up or down) can be confusing and difficult for a growing number of people who are being forced to consider where they spend every penny.
These days it’s hard for me to accept that stupid-looking choices are anything but stupid choices. There’s a distinct lack of creative, imaginative and legitimately clever thinking in the world today and I just can’t give people who make these stupid-looking choices the benefit of the doubt since there is no evidence of these choices being anything but stupid.
Just my ¥2, but I just don’t have much faith in these guys or corporate types in general.
The real mistake Netflix is making here is that they look like idiots. If there was a reasonably priced, reasonably stocked alternative to Netflix I would switch to them right now, rather than waste my time with a company that doesn't seem to know what it's doing. So, even if there is some sort of cleverness behind their apparent lunacy, along the way, they may hemorrhage so many customers and investors as to damage their business beyond repair. Why stand by a company that is behaving in this way?
Again, just my ¥2, but I think messing with how the public perceives you as a company is a huge mistake.
