- •International business school – budapest
- •1. Introduction
- •1.1. Academic Background
- •1.2. Key Terms
- •1.2.1. Film Promotion
- •1.2.2. Promotion Strategies and Tools
- •1.3. Research Question and Objectives
- •If some of the release and post-release strategies - as practiced in the us - were adopted by the Russian film industry, filmmaking would be far more profitable.
- •2. Literature review
- •2.1. Promotion Strategies and Techniques
- •2.1.1. Promotion as Part of Marketing
- •2.1.2. Promotions Specific to the Film Industry
- •2.2. Comparison of us and Russian Film Promotion Tools
- •2.3. Main Differences in Promotion Strategies
- •3. Research Methodology
- •3.1. Research Design
- •3.1.1. Research Approach
- •3.1.2 Research Strategy
- •3.2. Data Collection
- •3.2.1. Interviews
- •3.2.2. Questionnaires
- •3.2.3. Secondary Sources
- •3.3. Methodology of Evaluation
- •3.4. Validity and Reliability
- •4. Data Analysis
- •4.1. The American Film Promotion
- •4.1.1. Secondary Research
- •4.1.2. Survey Results
- •4.1.3. Interview Results
- •4.2. The Russian Film Promotion
- •4.2.1. Secondary Research
- •4.2.2. Survey Results
- •4.2.3. Interview Results
- •5. Conclusions
- •1) To give an overview of promotional tools and strategies in general and in the film industry in particular
- •2) To analyse us film promotion through examples
- •3) To review the Russian film industry with a focus on the promotional aspect
- •4) To compare different ways of promotion in the two countries
- •5) To summarise a list of strategies that can benefit the Russian film industry
2.1. Promotion Strategies and Techniques
2.1.1. Promotion as Part of Marketing
Marketing is a management process of communicating, creating, delivering value for customers and managing relationships in ways that satisfies customer needs and benefits the organisation. The marketing mix includes four Ps, such as product, price, place and promotion. The word ‘promotion’ is used interchangeably with ‘marketing communications’ in the academic literature, which influences behavior and attitudes to persuade and inform customers about products, ideas or services (Barnes et al., 2009).
According to Armstrong and Kotler (2012) marketers should have full knowledge of their customers and market in order to provide a successful business. They should follow steps, such as market segmentation in order to separate the market into specific groups of customers, targeting the most appropriate segments of the population, positioning their products in the minds of their customers and differentiate in order to create a competitive customer value.
Successful marketers should choose between pull and push promotion strategies, which are the two basic types of promotion mix strategies. Pull strategy means inducing customers to buy the product by spending a lot of money on consumer promotion and advertising. Push strategy means using trade promotion and sales force to push products to distributors who promote these to the end user. Push strategy is used by business-to-business companies, while pull strategy is used by business-to-consumer companies. However, most companies provide a combination of both (Armstrong and Kotler, 2012).
The promotional tools, often referred to as promotional mix, have quite differing definitions in the literature. For example, Armstrong and Kotler divide tools into the following three groups, above-the-line, below-the-line and through-the-line (Armstrong and Kotler, 2005). Above-the-line is an example of mass media advertising in their interpretation, and below-the-line is an example of direct advertising. Social media and corporate social responsibility are examples of through-the-line media advertising (Hackley, 2012). Broderick and Pickton (2005) would agree that the term marketing communications is used interchangeably with promotion and are describing all communications with the target audience. However, these authors have set up a different classification of the promotional mix, or as they call it marketing communications mix, grouping all tools/techniques under four headings: advertising, public relations, sales promotions and personal selling. As to the definitions of the terms ATL, BTL and TTL, they said that while ATL includes advertising promotions, mainly commission-paying media, BTL encompasses all other forms of promotions, other than advertising. They also added that below-the-line promotion has limited usefulness because it incorporates a broad range of promotional activities. This dissertation will focus on the theories and classifications of Broderick and Pickton because they are the most adaptable to the dissertation hypothesis and clearly structure the main promotional tools within four groups, which can be adopted for Russian release and post-release film promotional strategies.
The above authors complement each other and further interpretation of their ideas will be described in more detail. The dissertation will focus more on particular parts of film promotion strategies such as release and post-release film strategies referring to marketing communication tools as listed by Broderick and Pickton (Appendix 1).