Mather Economics was asked to be a neutral third party by a start-up movie theater subscription service and a leading movie theater chain to match data from the two companies and measure the incremental attendance and revenue from the membership program.

Mather received data from the theater chains loyalty program and the start-up’s membership list.  Matches between the two customer files were identified, and these individuals were analyzed to measure the lift in movie attendance following their joining of the membership program.  Mather used two methods to measure the attendance lift.  The first was a comparison of attendance by person using precise comparisons of attendance before and after membership in the program.  The second was an econometric model of movie attendance by person.  An indicator variable for membership enabled us to estimate the marginal effect of membership on attendance.

Mather found that membership in the movie theater subscription service increased attendance by roughly 100%.  We completed two reports, one for the start-up and one for the theater chain, so that confidential information for each company was kept private while overall results were shared between the two companies.  The start-up has subsequently been acquired and is expanding their service nationwide.