Online Movie Tickets Pose A problem For Product Managers
When you go to the movies, how do you buy your tickets? I’m willing to bet that your answer was not “online”. Yeah, sure, sometimes if the movie is going to be really popular or if it is critically important that you get your hands on a ticket, then you might go online and buy your ticket there. However, most of the time you probably get it the old fashioned way – you stand in line and buy it at the window. If you were the product manager working at one of the companies that sell movie tickets online, this would indicate that there is a real problem with your product development definition movieswallpaper.com.
What’s The problem With Online Movie Ticket Sales?
If you and I are not automatically thinking “I should buy that movie ticket online”, then clearly something has gone wrong here. What’s up with that? Once upon a time in the U. S. there was only one set of product managers who had to worry about online movie ticket sales and they worked for Fandango. Online movie ticket sales have been around for roughly 15 years. However, currently only 13% of the 1. 3 billion movie tickets that were purchased in the U. S. last year were bought online. That’s nothing to put on your product manager resume.
What makes this small number so very interesting is that we really don’t have any problems purchasing tickets online anymore. In fact, when it comes to concerts and other live events (think sports), going online and buying our tickets there feels very natural. If these product managers can convince more people to purchase their tickets online, then they stand to make a lot of money. Online tickets generally come with an additional convenience fee of between US $1 and US $1. 50. In all honesty, it’s this extra fee that turns me off from buying my movie tickets online.
There is a lot of value in selling movie tickets online. Online sales better help the movie studios manage what films are being shown where and when. Additionally, when someone buys a ticket online, the studios have a chance to determine the characteristics of the person who is buying a ticket to see this movie and they can also tell how often this person buys tickets. This opens up a world of direct marketing opportunities that have never been available to the people who make movies before.
How can This problem Be Fixed?
Based on the numbers that are available, not enough people are currently choosing to purchase their tickets online. The product managers know that something has to be done about this. Part of the reason for this industry’s slow growth has been the simple fact that there has only been one player: Fandango.
The good news for everyone involved is that this is starting to change. Fandango has had exclusive agreements with the major theater operators to sell tickets to the movies being shown in their theaters for many years. The theater owners are now starting to sign up other firms to sell their tickets in addition to Fandango. It turns out that Fandango is not all that upset about losing their exclusive relationship. It was costing them a lot of money in terms of fees paid to the theaters to maintain that relationship. Now that it’s ending, they can keep more of the service fee that gets paid for every ticket bought.
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