Loyalty as an important part of a successful cinema concept

For the new Swedish cinema chain Astoria Cinemas AB, success is tightly linked to willingness and ability to embrace new thinking. Since its establishment in August 2005, management of the 22 cinemas have been working purposefully to cultivate customer loyalty, primarily by making cinema-going a total experience for the audience. A small but effective component in the process is XPonCard’s electronic gift certificate.

Our concept is indeed a success,” explains Astoria Cinemas’ marketing man-ager Tomas Andersson. “While the rest of the Swedish cinema sector is falling off, we have increased our market share. We think this is due to our way of doing things. In a market that has always been rather conservative, we are quite active and push in new directions, both in terms of film repertoire and the way we outfit our cinemas.”
For Andersson and his enthusiastic col-leagues at Astoria Cinemas, it is a matter of making a trip to the cinema a total, high-quality experience, before, during and after the film.

More than just movie tickets
The reason Astoria Cinemas now offer electronic gift certificates is in part because they are modern, making an elegant and attractive gift, and are easy to “fill up” at the cinemas to the amount one chooses. The balance can be applied to tickets and purchases in the cafés, bars and restau-rants in the cinema lobbies.
Moreover, gift certificates can be used to buy the DVDs and soundtracks that Astoria Cinemas also make available as part of the total experience concept.

In an attractive DVD box
“Design-wise, our new gift certificate fol-lows Astoria Cinemas’ established graphic line. Its presentation is also a part of the quality image we wish to signal. That is why the gift certificate comes in an allur-ing DVD box that looks great on the gift table,” concludes Andersson.