Content in the digital era : multiplex configuration and online pricing
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- In the first chapter, the movie exhibitor's problem is analyzed in the light of two forces vying for the limited footprint of their properties. Recent advances have enabled exhibitors to satisfy consumers' long-standing desire for increasingly larger screens. On the other hand, digital technology has reduced the cost of playing the same movie on multiple screens, thereby creating an incentive for screen expansion to increase the number of show times for a given movie. Increasing the screens also has the added benefit of allowing the exhibitor to expand the number of unique movies screened at a given time. The goal of this chapter is to evaluate consumers' relative valuations of the large screens vs. more shows tradeoff in determining space allocations. Using a new data set on movie showings in India at the movie-chain-market-week level, an aggregate discrete-choice demand model is estimated providing measures of customer preferences for the number of movie showings and screen size. India provides a valuable setting to study this question because the densely populated cities face substantial space constraints and regional heterogeneity in tastes and languages suggest the option of more shows may be more important in some cities than others. The findings generally indicate that while adding more shows is beneficial, the additional expenses associated with building more screens as opposed to larger screens is not justified by the increased demand in some markets. In the second chapter, I explore how the digital era is changing purchase and rental movie markets. Low transaction costs make it easier for consumers to access online content and Digital Rights Management enables studios to provide durable and non-durable versions of their movies. I design a conjoint experiment to recover consumer preferences to determine the studio's best strategy in the online space. I find that heterogeneity in one-time versus repeat consumption preferences drives purchase and rental offerings. I also find that when consumers place a premium on accessing new content, they are less likely to inter-temporally substitute thereby increasing the firm's pricing power. Consistent with theory, commitment to future prices increases profits considerably. This supports retailers', such as Apple's, rigid pricing structure despite studios' push towards more pricing flexibility.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2012 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Rao, Anita, Ms | |
|---|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Graduate School of Business. | |
| Primary advisor | Hartmann, Wesley R. (Wesley Robert), 1973- | |
| Thesis advisor | Hartmann, Wesley R. (Wesley Robert), 1973- | |
| Thesis advisor | Nair, Harikesh S. (Harikesh Sasikumar), 1976- | |
| Thesis advisor | Narayanan, Sridhar, 1970- | |
| Thesis advisor | Srinivasan, V | |
| Advisor | Nair, Harikesh S. (Harikesh Sasikumar), 1976- | |
| Advisor | Narayanan, Sridhar, 1970- | |
| Advisor | Srinivasan, V |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Anita Rao. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Graduate School of Business. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2012. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2012 by Anita Rao
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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