Affären Astoria Cinemas
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In May 2005 the Swedish cinema chain Astoria Cinemas is founded and in July two years later the company goes bankrupt. In this thesis Astoria Cinemas is used as an example to illustrate the conditions for a culture-producing company in a commercial market. The purpose of the thesis is to discuss the strategies for cultural production that has been used by the actors involved in the Swedish cinema market, and also to discuss the structural environment on that market. It is a qualitative study based on interviews and documentation. A few conclusions are possible to draw from the empirical material, one is that Astoria Cinemas? management did not agree on the company?s business strategy and therefore might have acted strategically inconsistent. Another conclusion is that the distributing companies, at least for films with a high expected audience, have been acting according to a commercial business strategy and therefore to a higher degree chose SF Bio as their partner when exhibiting their films. A final conclusion is that the national market for cinema exhibition has changed from an oligopoly and now can be described as a monopoly, with SF Bio as the sole exhibitor.