How do Vue, Cinema City and Odeon use their strategies to appeal to different audiences?

The cinemas Vue, Cinema City and Odeon all compete for an audience in the city of Norwich, but upon inspection are strikingly different to one another. They aim to please different majority or niche audiences of certain ages, win customers by location and convenience, and show various differing types of film for their chosen group.

  Vue, formerly Ster Century, is an eight-screened affordable family cinema situated in Castle Mall, Norwich. Its specific audience is made mostly of the young – small children ranging to teenagers and young adults – along with their families. This is a wide scope of consumers, but Vue applies several gimmicks and perks to continue making money. Bean bags have been added to be used cheaply by youths; alternatively a row of premier seats in the prime area for viewing can be sold out to those willing to pay a few Pounds more. Vue is below par in comparison to Odeon, but due to its placement in walking distance for most of the populace it still manages to compete.

  Odeon is rather expensive when laid up against Vue’s general prices, yet I am led to believe that you get more for your money. Odeon boasts 14 screens, and reaches out to a wider audience by installing a bar for the more mature customers. Being at the riverside complex, it is a marginally farther distance to trek, but all the more rewarding when you arrive. Unlike Vue, Odeon sells food both separately and in bulk, as if to supply something resembling a meal instead of a child’s snack. Odeon’s higher rates for movies allow it to be more lenient with confectionary sales, making it all the more relaxing to visit for the seasoned movie-goer.

  Although I have not yet visited Cinema City, I understand it is set back from all other cinemas in the area. It is more of an independent cinematic experience, providing new or well-loved Indies and niche audience films to replace the sickeningly puerile family films showcased in the rival businesses. As well as feature films, Cinema City lets us use smaller screens to watch various art house shorts. Its main attraction is solely the films, with liquids only present in expensive alcoholic concoctions.

  To conclude, the three highlighted cinemas each aim to please a different audience. Vue is suited to the mainstream, ‘appropriate’ viewing and fancies of teenagers wishing to lazily drop into the closest screening possible. Odeon’s audience is ever so slightly more sophisticated, but still nothing but a commercially motivated business compared to the quirky independent shorts brought to us by Cinema City.