The European trade body for cinema exhibitors, the International Union of Cinemas, is launching the European Cinema Retail Group to share best practices and test innovative retail concepts. The goal is to help European exhibitors of all sizes and locations optimize their retail businesses.

“Retail in cinemas is at a challenging juncture,” says UNIC CEO Jan Runge. “We all know that concessions and retail are essential to the health of many cinemas, as profit margins are so much higher compared to those at the box office. In fact, retail helps us maintain moderate ticket prices to the benefit of the audience. There are various retail optimization strategies for different types of cinemas. The real challenge is to understand what works best for your site and to meet the demands of ever more connected, informed and increasingly price-sensitive cinema-goers. Is there an opportunity to drive sales by rethinking sizes and portioning? How can we increase ‘hit rate’ and spend per head? Have tastes changed in the past decade and is our offer still meeting the demands of increasingly diverse consumer needs?”

UNIC has teamed up with Coca-Cola, which supports the initiative and will provide their expertise based on decades of research and analysis and as a key partner of cinema exhibition throughout the world.

The group, which has so far recruited ten leading UNIC operator members from across Europe, will initially meet two times for brainstorming and for devising retail experiments. Results of the initiative will be made publicly available and be presented during Coca-Cola’s retail seminar at CineEurope 2013.

For more information, visit www.unic-cinemas.org.