CASE STUDY - MARKETING

Radhika the GM-Marketing received a meeting request from Jagan, who was the Regional Manager for a group of Cinemas. The title of the meeting was “Need Marketing interventions to improve the business in Pondicheery”. Radhika wanted more details about the meeting and what did he expect from her. She decided to reach out to Jagan and seek information. Both Radhika and Jagan work for the leading Cinemas Company, which is a market leader in the country. They decided to meet at 5pm in Jagan’s cabin.

Jagan offered coffee to Radhika and explained his challenge. Jagan manages 5 large multiplex. One of his multiplex was inaugurated 9 months back in a Tier 3 town - Pondicherry, which is approximately 150 Kms away from Chennai. Touted to be the first multiplex in the first mall in Pondicherry, it offered 5 screens and 1500 seating capacity. The town has several single and two screen cinemas and this multiplex shot to prominence instantly. The infrastructure and services were unparalleled and it slowly became the favorite hangout for the movie goers.

Pondicherry promotes tourism aggressively and has a French touch to its town architecture. There are several colleges, the famous JIPMER, Ashram and several restaurants and resorts near the beach. It was a favorite weekend getaway for the Chennai residents and to several others.

When the multiplex was inaugurated, the Cinemas ran to 80% occupancy for the first three months. It also attracted several movie goers from the nearby districts such as Villupuram and Cuddalore. The multiplex was talk of the town and Jagan was delighted with its success. He was meeting all his revenue targets and was proud of its performance.

Jagan pointed out that of late, most of the metrics are good except the Occupancy. Occupancy is the tickets sold vs. its capacity. In the launch months, this was 80% and stabilized at 60% after 5 months. Occupancy is dependent on several factors such as pricing, movie content, season of the year (festival / exams / vacation), what’s competition doing and preference of the cinema in the neighborhood. After 1 year, the occupancy has dropped to 50% and Jagan was worried. Usually as Cinemas gain prominence, their occupancy grows steadily. This wasn’t the case with his Pondicherry multiplex.

That’s when he reached out to Radhika and sought her assistance. During his meeting, Jagan pointed out that the Google Rating of their Cinemas is at 4.7 which indicated that their Cinema is still the favorite in Pondicherry. On weekdays, their occupancy averages at 25% and on weekend it improves to 80%, averaging 40% in a month.

Jagan asked Radhika to come with solutions that would help him improve his occupancy. Jagan asked her to explore all possibilities like, doing customer research, conventional marketing tools such as hoardings to improve visibility, promoting it with tourism etc. Radhika wasn’t convinced that the problem was visibility or awareness to pursue advertising. She decided to probe deeper and come with a comprehensive set of solution that would address the issue. She took a week’s time to come with an approach to solving this puzzle. She is well aware that occupancy drives all revenue in the Cinema and hence it is imperative to address this ASAP. She assured Jagan all assistance.

What should Radhika do to bring back the occupancy to 60%+?

Send your answers to subbu@drawing-board.in for a free evaluation and mentoring.