Wow – time sure flies – it has been almost 4 months since my last posting….this is bad. And in my last post, I was supposed to look up information on the MVNO for this particular post. Due to lack of information, I kept delaying to start work – I tried several times but just kept coming up against a wall: MVNO’s just do not share any marketing numbers. Guess I have no choice but to look up in a different industry..
Anyways, something struck my mind this morning; I was wondering how many cinemas are there within Malaysia. After 2 hours of searching, I discovered that Malaysians are spoilt for choice when it comes to cinema-going experience. The table above says it all.
There are slightly more than 90,000 seats per show in a day. Assuming that each cinema operates from 11 am till 11pm Monday to Sundays (which is usually the case) with an average of 5 shows per screen per day, this works out to almost half a million seats per day! Assuming average ticket price is RM8.50 (ticket prices range from RM5 to RM12), this works out to RM 4.25 million!
WOW! Imagine RM 4.25 million multiply by 365 days….(punches calculator) RM 1.551 billion! DOUBLE WOW!
But that isn’t going to happen. Because not ALL of their shows enjoy 100% occupancy; let’s face the truth, some movies just won’t cut it. I would assume that cinemas are operating at most 20% occupancy on a working weekday, 40% on Wednesdays and on public holidays / weekends 80%.
Imagine for one moment that cinema operators would consider coming up with a crazy offer to fill up seats on non peak hours during working weekdays (perhaps 10.30am till 12.30 noon); perhaps RM8 for 2 adults (which works out to be RM4 per adult)?
According to economics’ supply versus demand theory, when supply is more than demand, then price should come down. Taking this into consideration, the ticket price for the cinemas should be coming down instead of going up. The very reason why the cinema operators are increasing the ticket price is because there isn’t demand during non peak hours; to offset their losses, they increase ticket price in general.
The cinema operators should reduce the ticket price during non-peak hours (since supply is more than demand) to drive traffic during non peak hours. After all, marketing is all about experimenting. Cinema operators should experiment more with ticket prices, timing of the shows etc. Come to think of it, since ALL of the cinema operators rent / lease their cinema halls, perhaps someone should just rent their halls during non peak hours for a bulk price and then sell it to the public!
Wonder when will that happen?
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