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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Topic: Pricey Movies-Experts discuss why
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Dustin Mitchell
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1865
From: Mondovi, WI, USA
Registered: Mar 2000
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posted 05-03-2011 01:40 AM
The cost of movies is too high. If a family of four went to my theatre during our super bargain matinee they'd spend $5 per ticket, but lets assume $8 for a 3D movie, since all kids movies are obviously better if they're in 3D. If each kid gets a kiddie combo and the parents get a large popcorn and soda to share that's $57.
Now I am well aware of the costs of running a theatre, I've spent a lot of time looking over movie theatre chain financial reports on the web and my own theatre's P&L's. That's not the point. Customers don't care how much it costs you to run your business; and if they do care as has been pointed out they don't understand. They don't see a large soda that costs $5.55 a factor of the movie business model, they see it as costing 5 times as much as the same size soda at the local convenience store. Yes, I know, don't even lecture me, I'm well aware the economics and overhead costs of a gas station/convenience store are vastly different from a theatre-the point is Joe Public doesn't understand that.
Its all about what the public thinks the value of your service is. When Netflix gives unlimited movies for $8 a month and gas stations sell the same items theatre's sell in their concession stands for five times less, people are going to think they're getting ripped off, no matter how much it costs to run your business.
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Scott Jentsch
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1061
From: New Berlin, WI, USA
Registered: Apr 2003
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posted 05-03-2011 05:56 PM
quote: Mike Blakesley
People are always saying it's too expensive to go to the movies, but nobody ever says what people would LIKE to pay for a night at the movies. What does the average griping person think would be reasonable for a family of four? If you took a poll, I would bet the figure would be so laughably low that you'd have no prayer of making it. The problem is one of public education, plus the studios have devalued their own product by making it available for a dollar out of a pop machine.
I think if you asked, you would probably get something along the lines of the cost of a DVD from WalMart, because that's the point of comparison. You might get a few that bring it even further down and look at the $1 Redbox rental as the comparison point.
However, I really do think it comes down to a value proposition, rather than a cost proposition. It's the value that people complain about when the balance tips too far away from what they consider to be reasonable for what they're getting.
My family just went to see Rio in 2D at the Marcus Majestic in Brookfield, Wisconsin. The showtime was 7:05pm, so that means we paid full-price, even though it was a Thursday evening (the theater was not very busy, and until a few minutes before the show started, I thought we were going to be the only ones in the auditorium).
Tickets for two adults and two kids came to $33.
This was an evening out for the kids, so we decided to order meals from the concession stand (the theater offers an expanded menu, including hamburgers, etc.). We passed on the $6.50 grilled cheese sandwiches, so the kids had cheeseburgers with fries and I had an Italian Beef sandwich and my wife had a chicken wrap. If we had the choice, we would have shared two orders of fries among the four of us, but each meal came with fries, and could not be ordered without. We shared a 20 oz. bottle of water.
The total for the meals came to $35.50. We didn't have popcorn or anything to drink during the movie.
So that made our night out a total of $88.50.
Granted, we could have saved money by eating at home or going to McDonalds, but the point of the evening was to make it a fun moviegoing experience and eating at the theater was part of that.
The presentation was acceptable but nothing to write home about either. The screen was small (about 26 feet), and the sound was ok, but not impressive. Even though it was film, the projected image was better than is usual at other Marcus locations, so there was that.
The employees at the theater did very little to add to the experience, but they didn't do anything major to detract from it either. I would have appreciated them not lining up in the auditorium while the credits were rolling, but at least they waiting until we left before they started cleaning.
Was our night out worth almost $90? We did have a good time, but I definitely would not repeat that very often.
For much less money, we could have purchased a movie on Blu-ray, and had food delivered. I would not have had to deal with the two girls in the row in front of us texting during the movie (they came very close to getting told where to go, but I bit my lip and kept quiet).
It's all about value. If the theater staff had done anything to make the experience more fun for the kids or more enjoyable for us all in some way, that would help with the value I feel we received for the money. But they didn't, and the kids would have had just as much fun with the experience of going to a store, picking something out, and getting dinner to take home with us.
Guess what I'll be doing the next time we want to do something fun with the kids?
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Scott Jentsch
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1061
From: New Berlin, WI, USA
Registered: Apr 2003
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posted 05-04-2011 11:01 AM
quote:
Must be some new math going on here.....I come up with $68.50
Hard to mount a credible argument when one can't get the facts right [Roll Eyes]
OK, so sue me because I got a number wrong. I had several things happening at once, got two phone calls in the process of writing the message, plus a few other things I'm sure.
It was my bad for not double-checking my post before hitting the "send" button, but does it really diminish the point I was trying to make about value being the most important part of the experience? The actual cost doesn't matter so much as the value that the patron feels that they received in return for the money paid. Even at $68.50, it's an expensive night out that we wouldn't do very often.
quote: Mike Blakesley
Well...if your complaint is the cost, then you outlined several ways you could have saved money. The kids probably would have had more fun going to a Chuck E Cheese and you could have spent a few bucks for small sodas in the movie and probably come out ahead.
I agree with you that there are ways we could have reduced the cost, but that wasn't the point I was trying to make. My intention was to spend the money, I knew that it was going to be expensive going into it so that was no surprise. The end result, though, is that given the value received and relating that value to other options that we had, doing it again would not rank high on my to-do list.
Perhaps the best way to describe it is going to Disney World. Going into such a trip, you know that you're going to be paying an incredible amount of money. If there is one company that knows how to separate people from their money, it's Disney!
However, at just about every turn, the experience was very much worth the expense, so even though it was expensive, it was a good value. My kids were into the whole character thing, so we spent quite a bit of time hunting down the characters and getting their signatures in the autograph book and getting pictures taken with them. Our first morning there, we had breakfast in Cinderella's castle with all the princesses. I could have taken my wife to the fanciest restaurant in town for the money we spent on that breakfast, but the experience was well worth the cost.
quote: Mike Blakesley
But no matter what, you had an enjoyable evening out with the kids. I'll bet they had a fine time and didn't care that the "staff didn't do anything special." What's the staff supposed to do, bend over and kiss your foot? You got served your snacks in a timely manner and got what you ordered...correct? The movie was in focus, started on time, and didn't have any major film damage, correct?
If your movie experiences become just buying a blu-ray and staying home all the time, your kids will start saying "TV again??!" and tell you that all their friends got to see that ol' movie two months ago when it was in the theatres.
While our experience at the theater was not problematic, there wasn't anything particularly special about it either. Nothing to leave us with a warm fuzzy feeling that makes you want to come back to that theater the next time we're looking for something fun to do together.
The theater was not busy, so it's not like the employees were running around just trying to get everything done. In fact, most were quite happy to talk with each other, or just stand and look around while they waited for something to do.
What would employees at Disney have done in that same situation?
Maybe the person who took our tickets could have engaged the kids and asked them about the movie they were going to see. Kids (at least before they reach teenage years) love to talk about things, so it doesn't take much more than "Which movie are you going to see? Really? I loved that one!" to heighten their experience and getting them to respond favorably.
The bottom line is that we got what I expected, but nothing more. Given that my expectations were set low, where all I wanted was that nothing went wrong, that doesn't say much. If theaters are interested in competing effectively, they need to do more than just not screw up.
Not screwing up should be the baseline, and then it should be the ambition of those in charge to do everything they can to make the experience an enjoyable and memorable one that makes the customer want to return.
This isn't selling gas, this is show business! Where's the show? That "show" is where the value is!
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