Top 10 uses of ticket price modifiers

To operate as efficiently as possible, cinemas are constantly trying to spread attendance across the week and offer their patrons optimized ticket pricing and special offers, whilst ensuring at all times they are maximizing their revenue. To meet these multiple and often contradicting challenges, cinemas have been increasingly reliant on flexible pricing policies.

Houston, we have a problem

A lack of functionality in the box office software they use or a hasty configuration during implementation often results in the creation of many ticket types or price cards to match the specifics of each session.

Having too many ticket types or price cards leads to many issues from a wasted time when programming films, confusion for both staff and customers, not to forget reports that never seem to end! On top of this, if your software does not have adequate head office features to manage ticket pricing policies centrally, things can quickly get out of hand.

Price modifiers – the unsung hero

POSitive Cinema Price Modifiers allow the value of any ticket type to be adjusted dynamically at the moment of sale depending on several criteria. These modifiers can be set up centrally in Head Office and be applied to each site specifically or across the circuit. Our implementation team will ensure your Price Modifier configuration stands the test of time and allows you to easily introduce new offers and policies to match your future requirements.

Price Modifiers together with restrictions that can be set against each ticket type, will greatly reduce your reliance on having to create multiple ticket types and effectively removes the need to group ticket types into price cards or pricing templates.

Top 10 price modifiers uses that can be easily configured in POSitive Cinema:

  1. The early bird catches the (best) worm: Incentivizing your customers to buy their tickets in advance allows you to have visibility on the week ahead and maybe even adjust your schedule. You can set up a price modifier that reduces the ticket price at the moment of sale depending on the number of days or weeks left before the session starts.
  2. Squeezing out the older releases: As a film enters its final week, why not ensure it goes out with a bang? You can also set a price modifier that decreases the ticket price the further the sales date is from the release date. You can also use our Marketing Automation module to tell this to any of your customers who have not yet seen the film.   
  3. Driving membership uptake: What is a better way to encourage your most loyal customer to sign up to your membership program, than offering cheaper tickets? You can add a Price Modifier that automatically reduces the ticket price by a certain amount depending on what card is scanned, including staff cards.
  4. Maximize the yield of your auditoriums: This concept has been used for years by airlines and large events to encourage attendance of less popular time slots during the week. POSitive allows you to set up a price modifier that will increase ticket price depending on the session occupancy. You can set multiple price adjustments that are actioned depending on the % of occupied seats. More popular sessions become more expensive while filling out the auditorium to become less expensive as they about to reach full capacity.
  5. Last-minute deals: As a session is about to reach full capacity, it also becomes less attractive to customers: they might not be able to sit together, the auditorium is too crowded, seats left are not the best… To encourage the sales of the last seats, you can set up a similar modifier to the one above however this one reduces the ticket price of say, the last 10% of the auditorium’s seats, allowing you to sell out and win that bet you made with the distributor.
  6. Making the most of the holiday/weekend crowd: you can have your prices increase from Friday night until Sunday night except for Sunday matinees, where the prices are reduced, all with just a few ticks in some checkboxes. Your local holidays are also recognized throughout the year and can also be set to trigger price adjustments.  
  7. Happy hour! Why not set up a Price Modifier that will kick in for any ticket that is purchased for your less popular sessions or least popular day of the week?  
  8. Best return on top seats: Recliner seats have contributed greatly in improving the whole cinema experience, however, they represent a significant investment for exhibitors that needs to be recovered. Add a Price Modifier that will automatically adjust the price depending on the seat category (Dbox, sofa, love seat, recliner…). But it’s not all about making money, but also about giving back: use the same feature to automatically reduce the price of wheelchair companion seats.
  9. Dealing with all the formats: 3D, Imax, ScreenX, Sphera, ICE… every year brings new premium formats that keep attracting customers in search of new experiences. All these formats need not cause your managers headaches when they get down to set up their ticket prices. They need only define a Price Modifier for each format and these will get applied automatically when the session with a specific format is selected.    
  10. Tag that film: Movie tags are a great way to identify special events, movie marathons, or any other group of different movies in your cinemas. For example, you can create a tag called FESTIVAL to identify all the films that will be playing as part of your upcoming French Film Festival and attach a price modifier linked to the tag to offer special pricing conditions.   

Remember

Price Modifiers can contain many parameters and triggers that will all be concurrently checked against at the moment of sale, some will increase the price, others might decrease it at the same time, the result will be an optimized price that matches all your defined criteria. The only limitation is the power of your creativity to imagine what will be the most compelling offer for your customers and offer your business the best possible returns!

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