Semester: B
Business School
Department of Marketing and Enterprise
BA/BS/IBS/MK/JH
6BUS1064
SMALL BUSINESS AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
CASE STUDY:
“FLIX” - previously distributed week commencing Monday 22nd April 2013.
FLIX independent cinema
FLIX: The researcher’s story
I had wanted to carry out my research interview for a long time and looked forward to finding out why my local cinema had survived and apparently been successful despite a huge number of changes in its social and economic environment. I have lived in my present village location for thirty years now, raising my family. Over this time I must have taken my son and daughter to this cinema many times, as I had been taken myself when a child. There we had seen a huge range of material over that period, from Disney products onwards. Even more recently, when my son and daughter had come back from university for the weekend, we had gone to see the latest James Bond film. I had been struck then by how well presented the cinema building still was but also by how young the audience members now were. The experience reminded me that I hadn’t been for a while. To tell the truth, most of the films on now don’t really appeal to me. They are heavily focused on the youth market, contain lots of noisy CGI special effects and of course they don’t feature much good plot, dialogue or character.
Located in Johnstown, the nearby university town, the picture house is able to draw on an immediate population of 17,000 plus a wider catchment area. However the town’s population was highly seasonal, fluctuating not just round university terms but was also dominated also by tourism and sport-related visitors during the summer. In relation to other arts venues there was also a small local authority theatre. This was only a receiving theatre – in other words it didn’t generate its own shows but took acts and companies that toured theatres nationwide.
References: Gibson, O. (2005). EasyCinema eyes West End debut. The Guardian. London. Staff (2003). EasyCinema 's debut flight lifts off in Milton Keynes. The Guardian. London. Wikipedia (2012). The Point, Milton Keynes. Wikipaedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Point,_Milton_Keynes.