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Paul Yanowor became excited when he heard Boss Zhou clearly state his ambition, which was to completely change Fandango's product positioning and business philosophy from a strategic level.

Next comes the third point.

Paul continued: "There is also culture and habits. Americans buy an average of four movie tickets every year. Many older people are accustomed to buying tickets in offline cinemas and buying some Coke and popcorn. "

Zhou Buqi has long been aware of this, "It's almost the same. Let's start with the younger generation. The Internet is inherently more oriented towards young people."

Seeing that the big boss had such a good attitude, Paul felt relieved and said with a smile: "Fortunately, the proportion of teenagers in the United States is relatively high, exceeding 40%. This is the largest age group. If the ticket buying habits of these people can be changed, then After more than ten or twenty years of cultivation, in two or three generations, many traditional concepts can be changed."

Zhou Buqi nodded, "Just like Netflix."

Netflix is ​​an Internet product, so now Netflix’s users are mainly young people. The main platform for middle-aged and elderly people to watch dramas is TV stations.

But as time goes by, TV stations will become more and more marginalized.

Including flagship channels like HBO.

As the TV business declines, they can only transition to online streaming media.

Extending the timeline will make streaming media more and more popular.

Paul said: "So for Fandango, the most important thing now is how to attract the attention of young people as soon as possible, and then change their past habits and let them come to buy movie tickets on the Fandango platform."

Zhou Buqi looked at him with a smile, "What suggestions do you have?"

"It's difficult." Paul sighed, feeling a little embarrassed. "If you only rely on price concessions and subsidies to attract people, this may not be a long-term solution. Groupon was also very popular a few years ago and even went public. . Now it’s no longer possible, the performance is too sluggish, and it has recently been announced that it will lay off 10% of its employees.”

Groupon is the "originator" of group buying websites.

A very important strategy for developing so fast in the United States is subsidies. In addition to various coupons given by merchants, the platform will also provide subsidies.

Then he quickly accumulated fame among young people.

The number of users is rising steadily, and the transaction volume is getting higher and higher.

Then it went public.

But after going public, you can't be too willful. You have to be responsible for shareholders and create profits. If you want to create profits, you need to reduce the intensity of subsidies. Once subsidies are reduced, user activity will decrease, transaction volume will decline, performance will deteriorate, and stock prices will plummet.

This is also the reason why the US Internet industry is very wary of the O2O subsidy model.

Not only did this model lead to great tragedy during the bubble crisis around 2000, but in the new era, Groupon's O2O concept has also become a negative teaching material.

In fact, it’s not just the United States.

Many similar industrial Internet O2O platforms in China will also encounter this dilemma.

It’s subsidized and it’s very popular.

When the subsidy stopped, business went cold.

The most typical example is community group buying. When the trend comes, capital rushes into it like crazy. Everyone is richer than the other, and they are all frantically burning money to grab the market.

When the popularity subsides, the momentum of capital influx decreases, and many companies have no money in their accounts to provide high subsidies, and it will no longer work.

Zhou Buqi was also troubled by this.

He really couldn't find a good solution, so in industrial Internet businesses such as group buying, shared bicycles, and online ride-hailing, Ziweixing intervened in the form of investment.

Let them operate independently.

Whoever can do it well will do it, and whoever can't do it will be kicked out.

However, there is one industry that can still maintain a long-term subsidy system, and that is the movie ticket purchasing platform.

A very important reason is that the movie box office market is relatively small, and movies are the leader in the entertainment industry, which is often at the forefront of traffic.

On the surface, the platform is subsidizing movie tickets for users.

In fact, the platform is spending money to buy focus and traffic.

If you calculate the cost from the perspective of buying traffic, and buy traffic by subsidizing movie tickets, the price is really low and it is a great deal.

Paul Yanover is inevitably worried that if the company changes Fandango's business philosophy and implements a subsidy system... this policy may not be sustainable for too long.

After all, we stand from different angles and look at problems from different perspectives.

Paul is worried that Fandango will fall into consecutive years of losses and no profit.

But Zhou Buqi just wanted to use Fandango as a tool to introduce traffic.

After doing some research, Zhou Buqi already had a preliminary understanding of the concept of movie ticketing. However, this is not enough. Next, everyone went to a nearby newly renovated movie theater.

There are some new equipment here - movie ticket self-service vending machines.

Because movie tickets are purchased offline in the United States, there are often long lines in movie theaters to buy tickets. Especially when attractive Hollywood blockbusters are released, it is really crowded and hard to get a ticket.

Self-service vending machines can solve this need to a certain extent.

The manager of the cinema is named Lei Cole. He gave a more detailed explanation. "In fact, such a machine appeared as early as ten years ago. It was launched for a while, but the effect was very poor. And because of the inconsistency of data coordination, , often mistakes are made, and several windows sell movie tickets for one seat at the same time.”

Zhou Buqi nodded, "Can this machine solve the problem?"

Recor smiled and said: "Yes, this is a brand new self-service vending machine launched by Coinstar. It uses the latest technology and can be connected to the Internet in real time. It uses a lot of sophisticated equipment."

Seeing that Boss Zhou was a little confused, Paul Yanowoor explained, "There are two major self-service vending machine companies in the United States, one is Coinstar and the other is NCR. However, self-service vending of movie tickets is a new business, and they In the past, our main business was self-service DVD rental and sales machines.”

Zhou Buqi understood now, "The DVD market has been cold, so they turned to self-service selling of movie tickets."

Paul said: "That should be the case. In order to transform, NCR sold all of its DVD self-service rental machine business and product lines to Coinstar. I believe they are also developing their own movie ticket vending machines."

Zhou Buqi nodded, and then asked the theater owner Lei Cole, "This machine can sell movie tickets, but what about the charging process? What should we do?"

Recor said: "There is a membership card."

"What?"

Zhou Buqi was slightly startled.

Recor said with a smile: "We are a chain of theaters, with 12 theaters in the Los Angeles area, and we have our own membership card. The membership card can be recharged. Fans hold the membership card and face it here... Yes, put the card in Once you swipe here, you can make the deduction. Once the deduction is successful, you can issue the ticket."

With that said, he asked his assistant to come over and demonstrate it to Boss Zhou.

Although the two had no friendship or business dealings in the past, the appearance of Boss Zhou was a huge honor in itself, and of course he had to show off a lot.

I saw the assistant click a few times on the screen of the self-service ticket vending machine, select "Avengers", select a hall, and then enter the seat selection process.

That’s right, you can choose your seat in real time through this self-service ticket vending machine.

Sit wherever you want.

Zhou Buqi turned his head and looked at Paul.

Next, the assistant continued to demonstrate. After selecting the tickets and seats, he entered the payment process. The assistant took out a black membership card and placed it at the card swiping area.

Just listen to a "ding" sound, indicating that the card swipe is successful.

Then I heard the machine make a "buzzing" sound, and after a while, a movie ticket for "The Avengers" came out of the ticket outlet.

Recor was very proud, "It's very simple, isn't it?"

Zhou Buqi smiled without saying too much.

You also have to apply for a membership card and recharge the card, which is too troublesome.

There are hundreds of movie theaters in Los Angeles.

If every family had a membership card, would movie fans still want to watch movies?

Recor continued, minding his own business: "Actually, there is another payment model."

Zhou Buqi asked: "How?"

Recor said with a smile: "Everyone is using smartphones now, especially young people. In order to take care of movie fans more conveniently and allow them to buy tickets more conveniently, the company will develop a specially developed app for our company. 12 theaters throughout Los Angeles are included, no membership card is required, and you can use the App to pay online."

Zhou Buqi chuckled, "Can I vote online and select seats online?"

Recor was slightly startled, "What's online?"

Paul added, "You can vote and select seats on the mobile app, so you don't have to operate on this machine. That will be more convenient."

"This..." This seemed to be beyond Recor's understanding, and he hesitated for a while, "That should be okay, right?"

After leaving, Zhou Buqi asked Paul, "Do you think it's okay? Their app can select seats online?"

Paul shook his head, "I don't think it's possible."

Zhou Buqi said: "Well, it is limited by geographical conditions."

Paul said: "Indeed, if you come to the cinema to choose a seat, even if you don't have the best seat, you will have to choose some not so good seats after you come. But if you are not in the cinema, you will find that The best seats are all gone, and you may not even come. This should be the strategy of many cinemas to attract audiences."

Zhou Buqi snorted: "It's nothing more than relying on an undisclosed and opaque mechanism to defraud consumers."

Paul laughed.

Not much to say.

Many things in the film industry are inherently excessive.

If you go to the mall to buy a piece of clothing and you don’t like it, you can return it within seven days without any reason; if you buy a piece of food and find that it has gone bad, you can also get your money back. But it doesn't work for movies. As long as you spend money to buy a ticket, even if you don't go to see it, the movie ticket will not be refunded; as long as you spend money to buy a ticket, no matter how bad or ugly the movie is, the money will not be refunded.