An Implementation of Online Marketing in Movie Theatre: A Case Study in Thailand

Abstract

Movie theaters in Thailand have been expanded their ticket selling channels from offline to online. Therefore, customers can purchase movie tickets via online (website and mobile application). Some customers do not want to wait in a long queue. Some of them would like to make sure that when they arrive the movie theatre they are able to see the movie on the schedule time as they planned. Therefore, they decided to make reservation as well as purchase the tickets via online. This paper, therefore, is developed to be a practitioner-oriented case study which is substantiated by primary research conducted before. From the in-depth interview, we came up with twenty five attributes that respondents suggested for improving e-satisfaction and e-loyalty of the movie theatre. These twenty five attributes were developed from theoretical grounds of e-SERVQUAL (such as Reliability, Website/App Design, and Personalization), TAM (Perceived Ease of Use and Perceived Usefulness), and online offers. By applying Kano's model of customer satisfaction on these twenty five attributes, we can classify the attributes into four main categories that are 'expected', 'one-dimensional', 'attractive', and 'indifference'. Expected attributes (such as 'No need to use student ID with the student loyalty card', 'Discount on snacks for loyalty card holders') can result in dissatisfaction when they are not fulfilled. One-dimensional attributes (such as 'No expired date for the loyalty card', 'Discount on movie ticket for loyalty card holders') can produce both satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Attractive attributes (such as 'Promotion on special events/occasions') produce satisfaction when delivered, but cause no dissatisfaction if not delivered.