Hollywood movies are a huge part of the American cultural landscape.  In 2011, 1.29 billion movie theater tickets were sold resulting in $10.2 billion in revenue, according to The Numbers (www.the-numbers.com).  While this wasn’t the biggest year ever for either number of tickets sold or revenue earned for the American movie industry, it’s clear that movie theaters are a key American pastime.

Movie watching isn’t just popular in Hollywood or even California.  It’s popular all over the U.S. – but where is it most popular?

It’s not surprising to learn that people in Los Angeles County are big movie-goers but residents of LA County aren’t the ones most likely to go to the movies at least once per month.   In fact, they aren’t even in the top 100 counties.   The index for Los Angeles County is 112, which means they are 12% more likely than the average county to attend a movie at least once per month.

What county has the people most likely to go to the movies at least once per month?  It’s actually people in Chattahoochee County, GA.  While there aren’t a lot of people in that county (just over 12,000) – they love the movies.  Their index is 166, meaning they are 66% more likely to attend a movie at least once per month.

In general, one can see that the counties near the coasts in California, Texas, Florida, and the east coast have populations with above average theater going.  The south is a region where there is lower than average interest in going to movie theaters.

Local information is often more helpful to movie studios – or any business – when deciding where to market and/or distribute their product or service, which in this case is a movie.  To do this, we can look at zip codes.  The zip codes where people are most likely to go to the movies at least once per month are likely not ones people would expect as they aren’t in LA, NY, or Chicago – or any large metropolitan city.  The top 5 zip codes where people are likely to go to the movies at least once per month are:

• 39710 – Columbus, OH
• 32544 – Hurlburt Field, FL
• 06349 – Groton, CT
• 93943 – Monterey, CA
• 94035 – Mountain View, CA

What do these areas all have in common?  One way to look at the population is through segmentation analysis.  Esri, a geographic information systems company which also does data analysis, developed a tapestry segmentation that classifies US residential neighborhoods into 65 unique market segments based on socioeconomic and demographic characteristics.

The tapestry segments with residents most likely to go to the movies at least once per month are Dorms to Diplomas, Laptops and Lattes, and Metro Renters.  Census block groups where each of these segments are dominant have an index of 150 or higher of attending movies at least once per month.  This means that the average resident of these groups is at least 1.5 times more likely than the average American to go to the movies at least once per month.  This isn’t surprising for these groups as each of them are very young.

For example residents of Dorms to Diplomas are college students with a median age of 21.9 years.  Metro Renters are young, educated singles just beginning their professional careers in some the largest US cities.  They have a median age of 32.1 years.

LifeModes and Urbanization can also be used to classify consumers.  Segments within a LifeMode group share an experience such as being born in the same period or a trait such as affluence.   Urbanization summary groups share a locale, from the urban canyons of the largest cities to the rural lanes of villages or farms.  In this case, no one LifeMode or Urbanization group dominates but there are some trends.  80% of census block groups where Scholars and Patriots dominate have an index of at least 125 or more for attending the movies at least once a month.  Principal Urban Centers I, an Urbanization group, has an index of 67%.

More information about Esri’s data can be found at www.esri.com/data  or to learn more about Esri in general, go to www.esri.com.