FeaturedMulti-channel

How the entertainment industry is using omnichannel

Shopping has already changed the world with retailers starting to transform their relationships with their customers by offering an omnichannel shopping experience.

Customers can make purchases through a variety of methods. Imagine 20 years you needed to buy something and you were snowed in, that would be it, you probably wouldn’t venture out of the house. Today you buy what you want from the comfort of your sofa, or even bed if you’re really feeling lazy, through a variety of websites or apps for tablets and smartphones. Furthermore, online it is far easier to interact with the retailer and you can find much more information on the products, availability and anything that you need to know.

So it should come as no surprise that the entertainment industry has been starting to adopt an omnichannel approach.

Gaming

The video game industry has become more diverse with a number of big-name franchises that previously would have been exclusive to Playstation or Xbox are available these days on smartphones and tablets. This is very useful to the modern lifestyle with people tending to live life on the go and playing games on their portable devices may be the only way they get a chance to do so.

The online gambling industry has made a very good business through omnichannel methods. The vast majority of online casinos are now available across a number of platforms with the same account and offer a range of games via a live video link including roulette, poker and blackjack.

Cinema

Then there’s the cinema industry, which has shown drastically declining figures in recent years and it’s hardly surprising due to the lack of competition. It requires effort to go to the cinema. You’ve got to hire a babysitter if you’ve got children, get in the car or jump in a taxi, when you get there you buy your tickets, you don’t want to be too close, maybe you don’t like other people and don’t want anybody else sitting next to you, the tickets alone are expensive and that’s before you even get started on the drinks and popcorn. When you consider for a fraction of the price you can sit at home and watch something.

Television

There are modern TV dramas that everybody’s talking about like Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Orange is the New Black that have a very high budget (Breaking Bad reportedly had a budget of $3million per episode) in many cases a higher budget than most independent films. TV was never meant to compete with the cinema industry but right now it is.

Then there are Video On Demand Services like Netflix which subscribers streamed over 42.5 billion hours of content in 2015 alone. There was a time when Netflix only purchased the rights for existing movies and TV shows for their subscribers to enjoy, but over the past couple of years Netflix have began producing their own content. Shows like House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Daredevil ad Marvel’s Jessica Jones are among the most popular drama shows right now and they are all Netflix originals. Office creator Ricky Gervais recently distributed his new film Special Correspondents through Netflix, opting against the traditional cinema method.

Variety for the consumer

There is certainly a wide number of avenues to go down if you are creating anything in the entertainment field, which means larger competition for the market and more variety for the consumer. And variety is the spice of life.

Leave a Reply