You pay almost Rs. 200 for a service X. You drive almost 10 km to get the service. But to your utter dismay, you have little or no say in where you want your service to be delivered, to decide how long your want the break in between to be, you couldn’t sit with your family members/friends together, and the service provider has rigid timings in the day and age when even the post office is operating at convenient hours. To top it all, you need to pay up front in cash only.
Can you guess what X is?
Well, it is “Movie in theatresâ€
A couple of days ago I’ve been to Velocity multiplex in Indore to watch ‘Bluff master’. The whole experience set me thinking: “is there a better way of providing movie entertainment?â€
A brief history on how movie theatres differentiated themselves:
As far back as I could remember, 70 mm screens were the major differentiators, at least till 1990s. Slowly quality of sound and air became more important. Thus came Dolby Stereo and Air-conditioned theatres. Of course some players were able to sell the experience based on location, types of movies played and ticket rates. Slowly movie theatres migrated to multiplexes where screens are married with malls, hotels, casinos etc. Then there is technology in the form of IMAX, DTS, and 3D pulling people towards the talkies.
But there is a shift in the attitudes of consumers. Suddenly we have a whole lot of entertainment from sources like TV, Internet, Pod casts, Radio etc. Going to theatre is no longer compulsory to watch a movie, but it still is one of the major sources. But more importantly theatres or multiplexes have become sources of family or wholesome entertainment. This pushed everyone to open the multiplex and offer 2-3 screens combined with a couple of restaurants and game zones.
But as a consumer we still crave for more and these multiplexes are far from reality sometimes.
How can premium customer experience be provided in multiplexes? (Of course for more charges or better utilization of whatever is paid)
The process of watching a movie:
At each of the above steps customer experience can be enriched with little investments.
Book Tickets or Inquiry:
The whole idea of booking tickets online or over the phone is sometimes ridiculous. There is still something called collecting ticket manually. It is surprising that no one has gone far and allowed the viewer to print his ticket. And even then the booking part never lets you pick your own seat. Why even state transport busses are allowing you to choose where to sit. It shouldn’t be too tough to let the customer choose their location in the theatre for a little premium.
The actual purchasing at the box office is also old and expects you to carry cash. Why not allow plastic there?
Just like local train passes and bank cheque books may be multiplex chains can start ticket books where you get to write your own ticket and watch the movie provided you reach the theatre in some stipulated time.
Commute:
Most of the time these multiplexes are located far from residential areas. How about offering pick-up, drop services for someone who is ready to pay, especially very old people, children and large families find it tough to travel to the talkie.
Parking:
Anyone who has ever driven to a theatre will know how painful it is to get his or her vehicle safely parked. Sometimes the multiplex may not even have enough space to park all the vehicles; there should be a better way of doing this.
Before entering the theatre:
Most of the time you find families movie watching follows this pattern. Shop->Eat out -> watch movie. Most of the time they carry lot of items with them and put them in lap, near foot while watching the movie. Why not the multiplexes provide cloakroom facilities.
Worse still, many families come to the movies along with their kids who hardly understand the film. Why not there is a crèche.
Watching the movie:
If the multiplex has to dub itself as a family entertainment avenue then it should definitely think about the seating arrangement. Now how many of us actually concentrate the whole 3 hours? Very few. Why not the theatre be something like a hotel with round tables, I know it will take up less number of people, but providing premium services means charging premiums.
How about sparing a thought for people with back problems, wider posteriors, children, high needs for leg support and foot room? Why not design chairs with swivel, foot support and better back support. And why not provide a mechanism so that children can also enjoy the movie without breaking their necks.
May be there can be a buzzer service on the seats and an attendant on call a la first class travel.
Intermission:
Even the intermission and the allied entertainment in that time are seriously dated. How about increasing the break time so that we can comfortably pee, eat and stretch.
Lastly, the whole customer relationship:
To put it in a word, is absent. Lets say the multiplex know who are their regular customers, imagine what all they can do with this information:
- Send promotional items like movie trailers, wall papers, tickets, merchandise to the loyal and regular customers. May be there can be a customer relationship plasticard and every time he/she swipes in to watch the movie the customer can accumulate some points and redeem them in other places.
- Regulars can be given to upgrades to higher classes and complimentary popcorn and colas. After all if upgrades doesn’t make any difference incase the higher classes have empty seats.
In the end: if the multiplexes can enhance customer experience at every point they will definitely say,
24 Responses
I’d suggest simply using the subtotal function and filtering the data using the Win/Loss column. You get the same results and the formula is more comprehensible.
@John
That is one option.
There are times however when you want to see the whole data table or a filtered subset and still want to produce summary reports against an unfiltered field.
Is there a particular reason why you are using a comma and the unary (–) operator for the second array in the SUMPRODUCT formula? It seems to work the same if you were to string the arrays together using the asterisk (*). The advantage is that SUMPRODUCT treats the entire string of arrays as a single array.
@Mathew
Your correct, There is no difference.
I thought it may have been easier to explain this method.
Is there a way to do this on a large set of data? As in ~100,000 rows? When I try I get an error because the formula becomes too long. It says the max length of a formula is 8,192 characters. Excel 2010.
How do I incorporate a specific text within a cell for the second array. For instance, – -(C7:C13=”Apple”)
when I chose a specific text the formula does not work.
@RB
I am not sure what is the issue as if I use the sample data in the post the following work fine
Count:
=SUMPRODUCT(SUBTOTAL(3,OFFSET(C7:C13,ROW(C7:C13)-MIN(ROW(C7:C13)),,1)), –(C7:C13=”L”))
Sum:
=SUMPRODUCT(SUBTOTAL(3,OFFSET(C7:C13,ROW(C7:C13)-MIN(ROW(C7:C13)),,1)),(C7:C13=”L”)*(D7:D13))
You may want to check that there are no leading or trailing spaces in your list of Apples
I should have given a better explanation. Heres my situation. I have a column with cells filled with names like Column 1, Column 2, Pier 1, Pier 2, etc. If the cell just contained Pier and searched for that it works. But because it has other characters in the cell its not recognizing the pier. So how can I extract specific characters of a string of text in this formula?
Hopefully this was a better explanation
Hello-
This formula works pretty well for me except that it slow down excel and prevents some of my macros from working. I was wondering if there was a way to program this in VBA so that excel isn’t always trying to recalculate it. I would like to use a push of a button to get it to run then paste in a cell.
Thanks!
I am trying to sum filtered data in a column, but would want to ignore the negative values in the column. How to go about doing this?
@Akshay
Why not just add a filter to that column to only show the values greater than zero?
The negative values are required for reporting purposes, but their effect on the total is distorting the required output. Please advise.
@Akshay
I’d suggest making a post in the Chandoo.org Forums
http://forum.chandoo.org/
Attach a sample file to simplify the task
I have this working for counting and summing, however, I have a list and for the second array, I need a criteria. That is, I’m looking for b13:b200=”01.??.??” or =left((a1,2) or something like that. These types of criteria matches do not appear to work as I get a blank as a result.
Thanks!
@Bob
As your formula b13:b200=”01.??.??” looks like you are trying to check the first day of the month of the range
What about trying Day(B13:B200)=1
Hai Experts,
i understood this formula well and working fine in MS Excel 2013
but when the same am trying to place in google Spreadsheet it shows error as
“SUMPRODUCT has mismatched range sizes. Expected row count: 1. column count: 1. Actual row count: 2014, column count: 1.” and as a result #VALUE! Appears in cell.
Can anyone please help me how would i get it done in Google Spread sheet
or is there any other formula as a substitute for this.
Thank you very much.
thanks for providing this.. but why does excel keeps on prompting Circular referencing in cell D3?
@Vivek
I don’t know
I just downloaded the file and it is working fine and not showing that error
Goto the Formulas, Calculation Options Tab and check that Calculation is set to Automatic
What version of Excel and Windows are you using ?
I know that this forum is for MS Excel, but I am trying to help someone who is working in Google Sheets. The below formula works in Excel but Google Sheets returns:
“SUMPRODUCT has mismatched range sizes. Expected row count: 1. column count: 1. Actual row count: 39000, column count: 1.” and as a result #VALUE! Appears in cell.
This is the same problem asked by Srichirin above. Does anyone know if there is a formula for Google Sheets that will replicate what MS Excel does?
=SUMPRODUCT(SUBTOTAL(3,OFFSET($C$6:$C$39500,ROW($C$6:$C$39500)-MIN(ROW($C$6:$C$39500)),,1)),- -($C$6:$C$39500=H1),($D$6:$D$39500))
Trying to find a SUMPRODUCT formula that counts the word Closed by date for the last 7 days in a filtered list.
=COUNTIF(M:M,”>”&TODAY()-7) works ok for unfiltered count Column M contains Closure dates (blank if open) and Column L is Status Open or Closed
@ Terry
Please ask the question at the Chandoo.org Forums
https://chandoo.org/forum/
Please attach a sample file to ensure a quicker more accurate answer
I used this formula and worked like a charm! But, now I’ve been requested to use it but adding not one but two criteria in the same formula. For instance the sum I was doing added negative and positive numbers. I’ve been asked to use the exact same formula but adding that only positive numbers were considered… any idea on how to do this?
How exactly do you do sum filtered cells when two criteria are need not just one?
Thank you so much brother literally I have been struggling since morning to get the sum of the filtered category, however, after reading your blog attentively i got my solution, so thanks a lot once again.