Experience as a competitive advantage in the movie theatre industry: a qualitative study of its possibilities in the consumer Italian market

Abstract

Movie theatres in Italy from their first appearance during the 20th century had to adapt to the changes in the competitive environment, forced to evolve by technological disruptions in the way consumers enjoy the movie products, the appearance of new players in the market and the increase of competition for leisure time of people. The pandemic situation closed movie theatres and forced people in lockdowns, accelerating the changing of habits of consumers, a process already in act, and made important for movie theatres, in order to survive, to start working towards the next step of their evolution path. The direction to take proposed by this paper needs theatres to start focusing on the movie-going experience, an element difficult to replicate by the streaming services. In this way, changing their focus from proposing themselves as places where new movies are shown to where movie experiences can be found, movie theatres may find a way to adapt to the new challenges and propose something more to the consumer, detaching themselves from the limit given by the novelty of the movie product, an element already taken away by the streaming services. The value of the experience, a concept that started to have some relevance in the literature from the 80s, is seen as something that makes a product memorable in the eyes of the consumer and it is well used by many companies that wants to distinguish themselves bringing entertainment in the life of their customers. Movie theatre can use the value of the movie-going experience as a way to gain a competitive advantage not only from the competition of other theatres but also from other movie distributors systems. To find prominent examples there is no need to look just at the United States, where Alamo Drafthouse Franchise became an experience heaven for cinephiles, but some movie theatres in Italy have a clear idea on using movie consumer experience as a competitive advantage, differentiating themselves from the competition and building a loyal customer base thanks to their offer of a quality experience. Seeing the success of the cinemas focused on an experiential competitive advantage, this research seeks to understand if the italian market has an interest in this evolutionary direction taken by the movie theatres and which kind of factors of the movie-going experience proposed by these theatres are held more in consideration by the italian consumers. After the analysis of the literature and three heterogenous movie theatres proposition focused on consumer experience, the paper draws the common features between these propositions and determines the main factors that movie theatres exploit to improve their consumer experience. These factors are proposed to a sample of Italian consumers using semi-structured qualitative interviews, a method chosen in order to provide more insights to the research and to interpret the behavioral choices of the person interviewed. During the interview the consumer is free to talk about some topics pre-determined and provides answers on the value of the factors proposed on its movie-going experience. The results are projected on a table and the findings show how much interest the italian consumer have for each of the determined factors, with the insights from each interview providing explanations, trends and categorizations about the habits of the sample. This paper provides then answers and explanations on how much the Italian consumer value the movie going experience and which factors are more prominent respect to the others, giving directions and support for movie theatres that wants to step into the experience industry on which factors focus more to attract Italian movie-goers.