A Study Of Millennials ' Methods Of Movie Consumption

EdgeMark Cinemas are a chain of movie theaters located in 37 states with 475 theaters in those states covering the west coast, east coast, and Midwest. EdgeMark’s profits, like other cinemas, have been in a small but constant decline over the last 12 years. Industry Wide Average of 2.05% ticket sales decline per year for the last 12 years also, when adjusted for inflation, revenue has dropped an average of 1% a year for the past 12 years (Domestic Movie Theatrical Market Summary, 2015). The chain is currently looking to increase ticket sales, loyal customers, and profits by adding additional products and services.

My analysis will cover competition from substitutes and the change in buyer behavior and demographics. I will use the five forces model of competition and a SWOT analysis along with other sources of analysis. The information and recommendations that follow will provide you with the insight and building blocks to compete in the movie exhibition industry.

Revised: August 28, 2002 In April 2001, Matt Heyman, co-founder of Cinemex, the largest chain of movie theaters in Mexico City, looked out the window of his office and pondered the future of his company. In just seven years, Heyman and his partners had nurtured Cinemex from a student idea into the largest theater chain in Mexico City, but they faced new challenges every day. Many of these challenges came from competitors. For years competitors ran old, poorly-maintained theaters, but in recent months they had begun to imitate Cinemex’s top-of-the-line exhibition venues. Their latest tactic: offering two tickets for the price of one on Wednesdays. Heyman wondered whether Cinemex should

Occasionally, people use to go out and rent DVD’s to watch a specific movie from rental stores. Advancement in technology has brought a sufficient change in customer’s behaviors, today DVD rental stores have almost gone. Moreover, by time we saw enormous increase in channels being provided by cable providers, but today even that has been replaced by streaming media devices, thus my time, role of cable providers might also disappear due to the introduction of devices such as Netflix, Apple TV etc. “DVD sales have also been hit. The Los Angeles-based Digital Entertainment Group estimates DVD sales in 2008 fell 8% to $21.6 billion from a year earlier, while DVD rentals were flat.” Charny, Ben. "Viewers Tap Free Web Content." Wall Street Journal, Eastern

Concession sales and ticket sales are the two biggest sources of revenue for a movie theater but the exhibitors has limited control over both revenues and profits because those two are important aspects. Attendance allows for profitable sales of concessions and advertisements, but there are significant caps on the volume of concession sales per person, and selling price seem to have reached a maximum. Both continue to increase in cost to the consumers and may have reached a price point that is starting to drive consumers away from going to see a movie.

Flexible and inexpensive, focus groups consist of six to ten participants (Hartman, 2004, p. 408). Additionally, a moderator guides the discussion among its panel members that allows researchers to observe real-time verbal responses and nonverbal cues (Hartman, 2004, p. 402; Cooper & Schindler, 2014, p. 160). Focus groups moderators also have the ability to introduce new ideas to gain a greater understanding of concerns from respondents (Hartman, 2004, p. 402). However, a concern with focus group is the lack of anonymity due to the face-to-face participation.

This article represents a focus group type of qualitative research. According to Qualitative Research Consultants Association (2015), in focus group qualitative research, a group of individuals who share a need, life circumstance, or habit relevant to the research issue(s) at hand are led in a discussion by a modulator. The focus group discussions often include between two to ten respondents, and are often held face to face. They can also be conducted remotely through videoconferencing, teleconferencing, or

Ticket sales for movie theaters are at their lowest point since 1996. With the core demographic group expected to grow slower than the US population and with technological advances growing at speeds faster than the industry can keep up, ticket sales will continue to decline if the current business strategy continues to be followed.

Looking at where the company is in the market place, the cinema exhibition business segment has reached maturity (Reading International, 2013). Reading International will be looking towards improving their current cinemas to achieve more growth as well as developing niche-type of cinemas in selected markets and also procuring additional properties that contain existing cinemas. The objective behind these strategies is to attract more customers. Currently, Reading International targets several key groups of consumers by running various promotions across each country; school children are targeted with the ‘Early Bird’ promotion, students are targeted with ‘Terrific Tuesday’, working professionals with ‘Friday Flicks’, couples with ‘Steer & Beer’ restaurant ‘combo’ deals, families with ‘Spit the Dummy’, elderly with senior discounts, and general movie enthusiasts can sign up for the ‘Reel Club’. It appears that these consumers have been segmented on the basis of demographic grouping. What Reading International needs to be aware of however, is that there is a whole new generation of consumers that will have an effect upon how Reding International’s customers should be grouped over the next couple of years. This generation is known as the Net-Generation (N-Gen), and should

This media research method has been used previously, since the year 1993. According to the Hardwick Research, focus groups were first used in the U.S, for media research on war propaganda at Princeton University, during the World War II (Hardwick, 2014). The objective was to aid the U.S government to understand the most effective messages that would influence support for the war. Today, focus groups are depended on by researchers who aim to understand the emotions, behaviours and knowledge of selected participants. To add on that, Litosseliti (2003) acknowledges the fact that the dynamism of technology has been able to improve and enrich how data can be collected from a focus group. There are various developments, for example, projections, which uncover participants’ hidden attitudes (Hardwick, 2014).

1. How might the reward program described in case exhibit 5 affect the movie and event –going behavior of major market segments? At retail, what is the average value of each reward structure for customer’s dollars spent – 5 %, 10%, 15% or 20%? Which reward structure would you choose? Why? (For the sake of simplicity, ignore the one-time fees and rewards)?

At the beginning the company was considered leader of its industry due to its capacity to customize a store to its neighborhood,

Carson et al (2001, p.114) refers to focus groups as “A research technique that collects data through group interaction on a topic or topics”. They also suggest that the central distinctive characteristic of focus groups is group interaction, which generates a mass of data, which would be

A small group of people, considered to be representative of the target segment, invited to openly discuss products or issues at their leisure time in a relaxed environment. (Market Intelligence) This method is useful in providing a qualitative data. It is inexpensive to conduct, it

First is focus group method, focus group is defined as a group of individuals providing information in a structured format. A moderator leads the group of about 8 to 14 participants through an open, in-depth discussion rather than simply asking questions to solicit participants’ responses. The group is stimulated by comments from other group members in creatively conceptualizing and developing a new