Developing a Digitally Transformed Business Model

Sammanfattning: Online movie distribution has become a common practice after giants such as HBO and Netflix have entered the scene. Despite the new digital technologies, the Danish movie industry are having a hard time benefitting from these. While watching the Danish movie ticket sales decrease, the film industry can observe the increasing number of people staying at home watching Netflix. Therefore, it is essential that the movie industry start looking at their business- and distribution models in order to find out where they can optimize their businesses. By using a qualitative inductive approach, this study explored how the Danish movie industry’s traditional business- and distribution models can be adjusted; in order to meet customer demands and be able to compete with its digital competitors. Focus groups with movie customers as well as interviews with industry experts were conducted. The main results were that the participants preferred watching Danish content at home, because of the lack of special effects; because of the cinema ticket prices; as well as the many different options they have at home. Furthermore, it was found that the film industry has difficulties creating content that is embracing new technologies such as 3D; that they are still focusing on the mass when producing movies; and they are not able to get first-hand data from customers. Based upon these results, new business models and distribution models were created. These implement concepts of how the Danish movie industry can meet the requirements of the audience and be able to compete with its digital competitors. The business models include a varies of factors such as Virtual Reality, 3D, data-driven marketing, audience co-creation, new niche subsidy possibility, crowdfunding, more film club memberships and QR codes. The new flexible distribution model makes it possible for a movie to move into the Video-on-Demand window as soon as the movie stops selling in the cinema. These models propose that by implementing these concepts in their business models, the film industry can attract more customers to Danish movies as well as move toward a digital transformation, letting them benefit from the new technologies and be able to compete with its digital competitors. Thereby this study contributes with the first steps for the Danish movie industry to go through a digital transformation.