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Give People Something Better than What They Say They Want

(p. 205)  The picture palaces were a commercial success.  Between 1914 and 1922, four thousand new Palace Theaters opened in the United States.  Movie-going became an increasingly important entertainment event for Americans of all economic levels.  As Roxy pointed out, "Giving the people what they want is fundamentally and disastrously wrong.  The people don't know what they want . . . [Give] them something better."  Palace Theaters effectively combined the viewing environment of opera houses with the viewing contents of nickelodeons---films---to unlock a new blue ocean in the cinema industry and attract a whole new mass of moviegoers:  the upper and middle classes. 

 

Source: 

Kim, W. Chan, and Renée Mauborgne. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2005.

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