It has been a very rough few months for MoviePass. Since I last wrote about the company, theater operator AMC entered the subscription market, to early success, and MoviePass took out and paid back a $6 million emergency loan and flip-flopped both its pricing and its product. Lately the company has resembled a fish out of water, gasping for breath.
What MoviePass Can Teach Us About the Future of Subscription Businesses
The company provides a cautionary tale about understanding pricing and demand.
August 10, 2018, Updated November 07, 2018
Summary.
MoviePass, the startup that quickly gained 3 million customers by offering unlimited tickets to theatrical release films, has had a difficult run, requiring an emergency loan to stay afloat. This article offers five lessons that can be learned from the company’s troubles, most of them related to how companies need to better understand the relationship between price and demand, as well as to how unexpected consumer behavior (like a moviegoer who sees 10 films a month) can make a company’s cost structure completely unmanageable.
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