Archive project · foundational work
Rockbuster — movie-rental strategy
Rockbuster, a movie-rental business under pressure from streaming, needed a data-driven 2020 strategy. SQL against the rental database answered where the revenue is, who the best customers are, and how to price.
Why it mattered
Gave a business under streaming pressure a data-backed 2020 strategy instead of a guess — which countries hold the customers, how flat the pricing really is, and which inventory is worth pruning.
$2.98
avg rental rate ($0.99–4.99)
India · China
top 2 markets (60 · 53)
$215.75
top film revenue
SQL
PostgreSQL, from the rental DB
01The questions
- Which films drove the highest and lowest revenue?
- What rental durations did customers choose?
- Which countries and locations hold the high-value customers?
- Do sales patterns differ by region?
02What I found
- Customers concentrate in a handful of countries — India (60), China (53) and the US (36) lead the base, and the top 10 countries hold the majority of customers.
- The average rental rate is $2.98 ($0.99–$4.99) and it barely moves across film ratings (G to NC-17 all sit near $2.90–$3.05) — pricing is essentially flat.
- A few titles carry revenue — Telegraph Voyage tops at $215.75 against a long tail of low performers — a clear case for pruning weak inventory.
FIGCustomers cluster in a few countries
customer count, by country (top 5 of the base)
03Recommendations
- Launch reward programmes aimed at the high-customer-count countries — India, China and the US first.
- Keep a strong inventory of titles at the competitive ~$2.98 rental price point.
- Cut prices on low-demand titles to stimulate sales rather than let them sit.
04Tools & method
SQLRelational databasesJoins & subqueriesCTEsData cleaning & summarisation