Giant Eagle to Close Video Rental Departments

DAN ALAIMO

PITTSBURGH — Giant Eagle, a widely acknowledged leader in supermarket video, will close its rental departments, putting more of an emphasis on sell-through DVDs and automated rental kiosks, a company spokesman confirmed. Giant Eagle received SN’s first Supermarket Entertainment Retailer of the Year Award in 2002 for its comprehensive approach to video that included sell-through and some of the most attractively designed rental store-within-stores in the grocery business. Giant Eagle has about 100 Iggle Video departments. The retailer will continue to shift to sell-through-oriented sections and put in automated DVD rental kiosks, spokesman Dan Donovan acknowledged. "Responding to industry trends and consumer demands, Giant Eagle is in the process of detailing plans to transition its video/DVD rental business,” Donovan said in a prepared statement. “During the next nine months, the company will transition its video business to focus on sales of DVDs and replace the rental option with DVD rentals via automated kiosks.”

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