Movie theaters regardless of size are facing declining attendance (Business Insider, 2017).  Customers are unwilling to pay a lot of money when they can simply stay home and stream movies. Also, a lot of people’s tastes in movies is just not as “mainstream” but the movies they crave are not shown at most theatres (Business Insider, 2017).

Still, let’s face it, staying home watching a movie is simply not the same as on the big screen. So, what if you let customers demand a movie?

Demand.film is an Australian firm which takes a crowdfunding approach to cinema-on-demand (also available in UK, Ireland, NZ) by enabling users (age 18+) to request a movie event at local partnering theatres. The majority of movies offered are studio classics, indies, artsy- and foreign films. While the concept is not entirely new (see Graphr and Tugg), Demand.film is the first larger on-demand cinema platform serving markets beyond the US. Moreover, it uses blockchain technology to support producers, distributors and exhibitors with transparent and reliable sales data (Forbes, 2017).

How does it work?

Efficiency Criteria: Weighing Cost And Benefits

For a user, the time and effort needed to place or support a request is really low and tickets only have to be paid by the attendees if the screening is confirmed to happen (leapfrogfilms, 2017). Partnering theatres of course will have to check their schedule and also determine required attendance thresholds.

How does this crowdfunding approach create value for customers, theatres and platform?

Customers co-create by driving the entire process from requesting (incl. time, date and location) to “spreading the word” about the screening of their wishes. If successful, a whole crowd of friends and strangers can finally enjoy “their” movie on a big screen, in a social atmosphere outside the own house.

Theatres help making it happen by approving the request. Further, hence they use capacities more wisely and can generate additional revenue without uncertainty: if the event happens, this money is “safe”. They meet customers’ demand and have the opportunity to welcome (potentially) new customers at their venue. The insights can be a trigger for theatres to think about future events and screenings by illustrating potential demand (Saarijärvi et al., 2013).

Even the filmmakers gain increased exposure and reach for their films; especially those which are not regular movie material.

Finally, Demand.Film only wins if everyone else wins by charging a ticket fee (~ GBP 1.65 per ticket).

The contractual obligations are addressed by Demand.films “terms of use” which reflect standard contract law, all under one condition: if the attendance threshold is not met, the screening will not happen. Naturally, films are legally obtained and of appropriate content. While users can spread the word about a proposed event by any means, all payments and organization are performed through Demand.film as the intermediary.

What does the future hold for Demand.film?

Naturally, the main goal is expanding the partner and user network as well as geographical reach. Can it be a success? Certainly, never underestimate the power of niche markets and don’t forget about the reach of social media! Will it be a success? The on-demand economy is still on the rise in offline settings and competition never sleeps, so it will remain interesting. All I know is that “I would be in”, would you?

Resources:

Business insider (2017). “Movie theater attendance is declining as cord cutting becomes more popular”. http://www.businessinsider.com/movie-theater-attendance-is-declining-as-cord-cutting-becomes-more-popular-2016-9?international=true&r=US&IR=T last accessed 28.02.2017

Forbes (2017). “Tugg And Gathr Face Competition From A New Cinema-On-Demand Platform“ Online: https://www.forbes.com/sites/dongroves/2016/09/12/tugg-and-gathr-face-competition-from-a-new-international-platform/#60a94aaa4eff last accessed 28.02.2017

Leapfrogfilms (2017). Demand.film https://demand.film/

Leapfrogfilms (2017). Demand.film example https://tickets.demand.film/event/1115

Saarijärvi, H., Kannan, P.K. K, Kuusela, H. (2013). European Business Review 25 (1), pp. 6-19

COVER: Leapfrogfilms (2017). Demand.film https://demand.film/

Brands increasingly rely on creativity contests to integrate consumers into their new product developments processes. The main purpose is to stimulate creativity of internal marketing teams or quickly trigger original ideas for their brands. Not surprisingly, much of recent research is focused on the determinants of success and creativity in those innovation contests.

A study by Salgado & Barnier (2016) seeks to determine the effects of rewards, brand feedback and its interactions on creativity in innovation contests. The research focuses on the first stage of the new product development process, since this is argued to be the most critical stage in the entire innovation process (Hauser et al., 2006). To test their hypotheses, an experiment is carried out with respondents participating in a mock innovation contest. Within the general model, the reward and brand feedback variables are manipulated such that causal relations can be proven (Evrard et al., 2010).

The authors find that brand feedback acts as a moderator on rewards and creativity, and association of brand feedback with reputation rewards strongly stimulates creative designs. The paper highlights that extrinsic rewards (monetary and non-monetary) do not reduce, but instead improve creativity when they are accompanied with brand feedback. Besides, the effect of the choice of rewards is not neutral, but entails different impacts on creativity and therefore should be considered wisely.

The main strength of this paper is its relevance from both a managerial and theoretical standpoint. On the managerial level, the research provides practitioners with insights into the incentives that encourage participation and creativity in producing desired results. Therefore, the nature of rewards offered by brands (monetary and non-monetary) should be taken into consideration when designing an optimal consumer integration process in new product development. Especially for large ‘unblind’ co-creation platforms, where designs are not visible and feedback is rare, restructuring their model may be considered to generate additional creativity. From a theoretical standpoint, this study bridges the longstanding research gap with respect to reward effects on creativity in the context of an innovation competition. Currently, there exists a paradox between academic literature, which emphasize the wide range of participants’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivations in creative contests and managerial practices, which mainly focus on monetary rewards. This research solves this paradox by addressing both factors.

As a downside, the authors did not take into consideration the potential interactions between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, which could have influenced the impact on the expected creativity level. The paper finds that extrinsic motivations are ‘at the service’ of intrinsic motivations, since extrinsic motivations have no negative effect on creativity when associated with feedback, but intrinsic motivations play a determining role in the accomplishment of creative designs. However, the level of intrinsic motivation is dependent on individual traits and therefore dynamic effects can exist between intrinsic motivation and the effect of rewards. Future research should focus on investigating the interactions between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. As a last note, I would suggest to include the impact of culture on creative designs. A study by Chua et al. (2014), proposed that creativity heavily depends on ‘cultural narrowness’ and therefore the impact of country origin could have an influence on participation and creativity in an innovation contest. What effect do you think country origin has on this relationship? And what role would brand feedback play in this relationship?

References
Chua RYJ, Roth Y and Lemoine J-F (2014) The impact of culture on creativity: How cultural tightness and cultural distance affect global innovation crowd- sourcing work. Administrative Science Quarterly 20(10): 1–39

Evrard, Y., Pras, B. and Roux E (2010). ) Market: Études et recherches en marketing, 4^e édition. Dunod. Dunod.

Hauser, J.R. Tellis, G.J. and Griffin, A. (2006) Research on innovation: A review and agenda for marketing science. Marketing Science, 25(6), 687–717.

Salgado, S. and Barnier, V. (2016). Encouraging and rewarding consumer creativity in new product development processes: How to motivate consumers involved in creative contests? Recherche et Applications en Marketing, 31(3), 88-110.

Have you ever applied to a certain position for job or an internship and felt like the recruitment process was exhausting? That it takes weeks to receive any response either positive or negative; and that when the later happens no real reason was given to you? If you did experience this kind of situation, you may ask yourself, why is this so often the case?

Well, the problem predominantly comes from companies’ recruiting practices. According to theLadders a recruiter will merely spend more than 6 seconds reading through a candidate’s resume. While BeHiring found out that a cover letter has only 17% of chance of being read, and most recruiters do not even bother replying to candidates.

Overall, an inefficient and unfair system has been going on for decades which is based on two documents which use is outdated. Moreover, this lengthy process is very expensive to companies who spends a lot of resources on those recruitments.

Those are the reasons why the online SaaS platform Scoringline was founded. Scoringline is an innovative and collaborative tool which value proposition is to ultimately allows companies to capture the most skilled candidates out of a large pool of applicants. It promises companies an endless to save time on both reading resumes and sorting CVs while allowing them to offer a better experience to their candidates.

How do companies benefit?

• (Automatic qualification) –  CV-sorting is replaced by an automatic score
• (Confirm skill sets) – Prescreening phone calls are replaced by role playing simulation
• (Save time) – The best candidates are invited to follow up interviews, recruiters save up to 50% of their time as it only takes a few clicks to send an answer to all candidates regarding their applications
• (Enhance employer brand) – The employer’s brand is enhanced by using an innovative hiring process
• (Candidates profile expanded) – The company’s pool of candidates naturally grows by including people that may not have the usual profile but do have the skills necessary to perform in the position

How do applicants benefit?

• (Outstanding experience) – Companies can forget about the long ATS’ forms and only ask relevant questions to applicants
• (Let candidates express themselves) – It gives an opportunity to reveal applicants’ skills and motivation
• (Equity) – The process is fair as every application is treated similarly – Guaranteeing equal opportunities

How do Scoringline benefit?

Scoringline business model consist of two different offers.

The first one consist of offering a monthly subscription that allows clients to use the platform in their recruitment process. While the second offer consist of selling a HR service where Scoringline’s take care of finding the right candidate for a company who decided to outsource its HR capabilities.

Value Co-creation

Companies using the new online recruitment processes will be able to enjoy network value creation: as more and more job seekers apply through the platform, companies will gradually have a larger database of candidate profiles as all applications are saved, and rejected applicants could still be called back at later stages, saving great time in the process. Furthermore, different departments of a multinational company may decide to share their pool of candidates.

On the other hand, as it performs its recruiting service, Scoringline saves the profiles of all candidates who applied to one of their client’s position. This allow Scoringline to enjoy an ever-growing pool of candidate within which it may find the right profile for its clients.

In either case, the value of this network grows with time as more profiles enter the database, promising a sustainable future to it.

Efficiency Criteria

Scoringline business model is adapted to most political, social or legal regulations of the countries in which it operates. It promotes the transparency of company’s recruiting processes, supports equal opportunities and revolutionize candidates’ experience which are now able to fully express themselves and to not be left without any update about where does their application stands.

Sources:

• https://en.scoringline.com
• https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/you-only-get-6-seconds-of-fame-make-it-count/
• http://recruiterbox.com/blog/8-useful-recruitment-infographics/

Traditionally movie studios have used the same marketing strategies to promote their movies. Think about advertisements through different channels on the television, release announcements in the newspapers or even advertisement which are visible for us to see on different billboards. According to McKinsey the global cinema advertising expensive where approximately 2.1 billion US dollars in 2014. This amount is expected to grow up to 2.8 billion dollars in 2018. So, in the near future we can state that the advertising expediture will grow. From a logical perspective I would assume that companies are blessed with the arrival of different great social media platforms. These platforms have a gigantic reach where consumers make use of but also corporations. In the past consumers could only inform eachother about a certain product verbally or via letters. Nowadays, the consumer has a much greater reach due to social platforms such as Facebook etc. These platforms make it easier and also less expensive for us to communicate. Thus, companies should also make use of these platform to have less expenditures, right?

To argue that the use of social media platforms can indeed decrease the advertisement expenditure and still increase box office performances I read an article about ‘the Power of the Like button’. The authors in this article state that before a certain movie is released the ‘likes’ of this prerelease have a signigicantly positive impact on box office performance. With box office performances the authors mean the opening week box office records. Thus, they state that a 1% increase in the number of ‘likes’ in the week prior to the release of the movie, is associated with an increase of the opening week box office records with 0,2% (Cheng et al, 2017). The authors did the research by firstly collecting data from the websites IMDb, Facebook and Box Office Mojo throughout the calendar year 2013. The data that they collected included movie-specific characteristic, ‘like’ activities on Facebook and the box office performance which is the amount of opening box office records. In the figure below you can see that the opening records of Star wars: The Force Awakens is roughly 248 billion US dollars.

There are two main stages in which the generated data was analysed. Firstly the authors wanted to understand the relationship between prerealesed ‘likes’ and box office performances by running a cross-sectional regression.  Secondly the authors applied the Fama-McBeth regression to estimate the prerelease ‘like’ impact over time. It is interest to see that a 1% increase in ‘likes’ prior to the release of the movie indeed increased the opening week box office record with 0,2%. Even more interesting to see that the prerealesed ‘like’ effect becomes stronger as it approaches the release date. This research makes a huge contribution to businesses that are considering to use the Facebook like button as a marketing tool. On the other hand, this article does not take the popularity of the actors in the movies into consideration and it is not clear whether the results of this research apply for other products which are movie related.

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Sources:

Ding, C., Cheng, H., Duan, Y. and Jin, Y. (2017). The power of the “like” button: The impact of social media on box office. Decision Support Systems, 94, pp.77 84.

McKinsey & Company, Global media report 2015, 2015. http://www.mckinsey.com/industries/media-and-entertainment/our-insights/global-media-report-2015.(Accessed 16.08.17).