THE MOVIE SCHEDULING PROBLEM IN FLANDERS Aantal woorden: 16.942 Maud Vandevenne Stamnummer : 000130664757 Promotor: Prof. Dr. Dries Goossens Masterproef voorgedragen tot het bekomen van de graad van: Master in Business Engineering: Operations Management Academiejaar: 2018-2019 Preface This thesis forms the conclusion to my studies in Business Engineering – Operations Management at Ghent University. I have truly enjoyed my time here and will be eternally grateful to my parents for giving me this opportunity. First of all I would like to thank my promotor, professor Goossens, for his excellent guidance and helpful comments which have made this thesis possible. Next, my most sincere thanks to the movie exhibitors who were so kind to meet me for an interview, this really proved to be very helpful. Furthermore, I have to send out my deepest thanks to my college friends who were always there to help me with programming and econometrical questions. Also, many thanks to my brother and his friends for showing me parts of Minerva I had never heard of in my previous five years at Ghent University. I would also like to thank my roommates and my siblings for pretending to listen to all my thesis rambling over these last months. Last but not least, my sincerest thanks to my friends and family for their undying support throughout this journey. Permission For Use On Loan I declare that the content of this Master's Dissertation can be consulted and / or reproduced if the sources are mentioned. Maud Vandevenne, January 2019 Abstract This master’s dissertation focuses on finding an optimal scheduling method for movies in Flemish movie theaters. This problem is solved in two stages, first the demand function gets estimated and in the second phase an actual movie schedule is created. In this paper, the impact on the overall profit of a number of scheduling constraints is examined. Out of the test results it became clear that the requirement to play movies during a period of consecutive weeks causes a significant decrease in profit. As well as the constraint which forces the cinema to show a different movie on every screen at a given point in time and the constraint to show a diverse selection of movies. The extent of the impact of these last two constraints largely depends on the size of the theater. Table of Contents Preface ...................................................................................................................................................... I Permission For Use On Loan .................................................................................................................... II Abstract .................................................................................................................................................. III List of Figures ......................................................................................................................................... VII List of Tables ......................................................................................................................................... VIII 1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 2. Movie Industry ................................................................................................................................ 2 3 Literature review ............................................................................................................................. 7 3.1 Predicting movie Demand ............................................................................................................. 7 3.2 Scheduling movies in the cinema .................................................................................................. 9 4 Field research ................................................................................................................................ 13 4.1 Interviews movie exhibitors .................................................................................................. 13 4.1.1 Cinema Cartoon’s Antwerp – Jan-Willen Van Eemeren ................................................ 13 4.1.2 Sphinx Cinema Ghent – Patrick Deboes ........................................................................ 15 4.1.3 Studio Skoop Ghent – Walter Vander Cruysse .............................................................. 15 4.1.4 Euroscoop Genk – An Van de Casseye .......................................................................... 16 5 Predicting Demand in R ................................................................................................................. 17 5.1 Parameters .................................................................................................................................. 17 5.2 Dataset ........................................................................................................................................ 18 5.3 Hypotheses .................................................................................................................................. 20 5.4 Regression model ........................................................................................................................ 21 5.5 Demand division .......................................................................................................................... 23 6 Scheduling Movies in Cplex ........................................................................................................... 25 6.1 Optimization function ................................................................................................................. 25 6.2 Constraints................................................................................................................................... 26 6.2.1 Necessary Constraints ................................................................................................... 26 6.2.2 Optional Constraints ...................................................................................................... 26 6.3 Computational Results .......................................................................................................... 27 6.3.1 Objective function ................................................................................................................ 28 6.3.2 Movie schedule ............................................................................................................. 30 7 Conclusions and future research ................................................................................................... 33 7.2 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................ 33 7.3 Future research ..................................................................................................................... 34 8 References ..................................................................................................................................... 35 9 Appendices .................................................................................................................................... 38 A. Purchasing Power ...................................................................................................................... 38 B. Interviews movie exhibitors ...................................................................................................... 39 B.1 Interview Jan-Willem Van Eemeren, Cinema Cartoon’s Antwerpen ...................................... 39 B.2 Interview Patrick Deboes, Sphinx Gent ................................................................................... 44 B.3 Interview Walter Vander Cruysse, Studio Skoop Gent............................................................ 49 B.4 Interview An Van de Casseye, Euroscoop Genk ...................................................................... 52 C. Output R .................................................................................................................................... 54 C.1 Original Model ......................................................................................................................... 54 C.2 Second Model .......................................................................................................................... 55 C.3 Significance second order interactions ................................................................................... 56 C.4 Final Model .............................................................................................................................. 57 C.5 Statistical Tests on Final Model ............................................................................................... 58 C.6 Regression with GLS ................................................................................................................ 59 C.7 Regression Model Following Weeks ........................................................................................ 62 C.8 ANOVA test demand model .................................................................................................... 66 D. Demand division special cases .................................................................................................. 67 D.1 Kids’ movies in school week .................................................................................................... 67 D.2 Kids’ movies in holiday