突发公共事件对电影行业影响的量化研究

人工收集和整理2012—2018年在中国市场上映的首轮院线电影信息数据,构建电影需求的嵌套logit回归模型,以新冠肺炎疫情为准自然实验,来量化突发公共事件对电影行业复产复工的影响。结果显示:第一,关于上映时间选择,在恢复营业后,如果所有因为疫情尚未上映的电影选择顺延上映能有效避免过度竞争的局面。第二,关于上映节奏控制,控制好未定档电影的上映节奏,保持适当的竞争能促进经济效益提升。其中,从11月份开始以每周两部的频率上映未定档电影的经济效益最佳。第三,关于上映方式选择,与线下播放相比,疫情期间选择线上播放能及时收回成本并有利于经济收益最大化的实现。研究结论为电影行业制定复产复工策略提供依据,为未来应对突发公共卫生事件提供参考。     

I Want You Back: The Interplay Between Legal Availability and Movie Piracy

Abstract

Although it is well known in the academic literature that anti-piracy measures can reduce the demand for pirated content, there are relatively few papers analyzing how legal availability impacts piracy. In this study, we answer two relevant research questions: (1) Does the availability of movies in legal digital channels reduce the demand for digital piracy? (2) Is the level of piracy prior to a movie’s release in a legal digital channel a reliable signal of legal demand after release? We answer these questions using a unique data set provided by a major motion picture studio. Our data contain 1520 catalog movies introduced to iTunes between April 2011 and April 2012. We find that iTunes availability leads to an 11.8% decrease in monthly piracy. We also find that pre-release piracy positively correlates with post-release electronic sell-through sales but not with video-on-demand sales.     

Naming strategies as a tool for communication: application to movie titles

Abstract

Product naming is regarded as one of the most important communication decisions for firms to deliver information on their new products, particularly in the case of products with unobservable attributes, such as motion pictures, music, books, and games. Despite its importance, there has been little research on “how to name a product” as a communication decision. Hence, we propose a conceptual framework to describe naming decisions as two-stage strategic decisions. The first-stage decision involves “what kind of information to be communicated via product names,” which we call the “information choice” strategy. The second-stage decision is how to express this information through product names, which we call the “expression” strategy. We applied a two-level hierarchical Bayesian model to a data set consisting of opening weekend box-office sales, names, and release dates for 393 movies released in seven countries. Our empirical study provides useful findings on movie naming. First, the information choice for movie titles significantly impacts movies’ viewership. Second, the effects of “what to choose” depend on “how to express”. Third, significant interaction effects occur between information choice strategies and product characteristics, which implies that naming strategies depend on the product’s characteristics. One particularly noteworthy finding in this study is that although it is common sense to avoid negative wording in product names in most industries, negative content in movie titles positively impacts box-office sales.     

我国葡萄酒进口需求及产品异质性的实证研究

我国是葡萄酒净进口国,随着我国居民收入水平的不断提高,进口规模逐渐扩大,需要把握进口变化的动因,判断我国葡萄酒进口贸易的发展方向,从而促进我国葡萄酒贸易的健康发展。运用进口需求模型定量分析葡萄酒进口变化的主要决定因素,进而针对不同来源地产品之间的关系,用近似理想需求系统模型进行分析。结果表明,随着消费者收入的提高和进口关税的降低,我国葡萄酒进口贸易仍有很大发展空间;进口葡萄酒和国产葡萄酒存在差异化竞争,进口葡萄酒占据了我国高端市场;在我国的葡萄酒进口市场上,法国与智利和澳大利亚的产品具有异质性,智利与澳大利亚的产品表现为同质性。我国葡萄酒进口规模将逐渐扩大,国产高端产品需要一定的保护和培育。     

Star power in the eye of the beholder: A study of the influence of stars in the movie industry

Organizations employ various risk-mitigation strategies to cope with the uncertainty in marketing new products. In the motion picture industry, an important strategy is to cast star actors and actresses in movies. The ultimate box-office success, however, depends on multiple stakeholders involved with financing, making, distributing, and watching the movie. In pursuing different goals and interests, the stakeholders may look for different aspects of star power to mitigate their own risk. This paper examines how the influence of stars varies across key stakeholders in the movie market. The results show that, in general, stars have a greater impact on the stakeholders involved in the earlier stages of movie development and exhibition (where the risks are greater) than on those in later stages. Movie project financiers and exhibitors are strongly and directly influenced by star power, but news media and movie audiences are influenced less and only indirectly. Situated at the early stage of the movie “value chain,” the financiers are most concerned with stars’ past box-office performance. Exhibitors, however, are influenced by the “match” between a star’s genre participation history and the genre of a specific movie. By contrast, news media and movie audiences are influenced indirectly through the stars’ impact on earlier stakeholders and their decisions. The findings shed light on the value of employing star elements in new products, the marketing of stars, and movie promotion strategies.     

The dynamics of the Chinese film industry: factors affecting Chinese audiences’ intentions to see movies

This study attempts to understand the dynamics of the rapidly growing Chinese film industry by relying on a revised reason action model that uses a data-mining approach with aggregated data to examine the determinants of people’s intentions to see movies. The results show that attitude towards seeing movies indicated by online film ratings, collective norms represented by box-office performance and Academy Award win(s) significantly predict intentions to see movies. In addition, a movie’s year of release, star power, country of origin, adaptation from a novel and status as a sequel were significant predictors of aggregated intentions.     

Trade barriers and trade flows with product heterogeneity: An application to US motion picture exports

We extend Melitz (2003) to allow for both global and bilateral fixed export costs. If global (bilateral) export costs dominate, the average sales ratio (import sales per product variety/domestic sales per variety), decreases (increases) in variable (fixed) trade barriers, due to adjustment along the intensive (extensive) margin of trade. Using novel data on bilateral US movie exports we find that (i) variation in box-office revenues per movie is much larger than in the number of movies exported, and (ii) the average sales ratio decreases in geographic and linguistic distance. These findings suggest that global fixed export costs dominate.     

Movies

ABSTRACT

The movie has been with us in a variety of forms for over a century. During that time the movie as an artefact has played a number of roles from pure entertainment to political propaganda to a way in which we preserve or pass down memories. The movie moves. Getting its name from the innovation of having moving pictures, with the first film showing a horse galloping as the camera recorded a series of stills in quick succession; the movie is about physical motion, but also about emotional provocation and films have always been implicated in the market, in creating market demand and marketing ideology. So, movies show moving pictures and they serve to move us emotionally. This paper reflects on the development of the movie as a storytelling device, the role that they play in our lives, and why the movies can be viewed as a marketplace icon.     

中国水产品出口增长的源泉分析

借助于联合国粮农组织"渔业统计时间序列通用软件"数据库数据,利用恒定市场份额分析模型对中国水产品出口增长源泉展开分析,并与泰国、印尼、印度和越南进行横向对比。研究结果表明:中国水产品出口的增加主要是由于水产品竞争力提高引起的,市场规模的扩大对中国水产品出口有着积极的作用,商品结构效应和具体竞争效应对水产品出口的作用由负面作用转为正向作用,说明水产品出口市场结构日趋合理,并开始对出口增长产生积极的促进作用。泰国、印尼和印度出口的增长主要得益于市场需求规模的扩大,越南则是其竞争力增强起到了主导作用。     

Timing Movie Release on the Internet in the Context of Piracy

Offering movies on the Internet is one way of combating the issue of online movie piracy, although the tradeoff is the cannibalization of the more revenue-generating channels. Given this tradeoff and the rather unique “staggered window distribution” mechanism followed by the movie industry, this article addresses the problem of when the studio owner should release the movie online to maximize the entire revenue stream of that movie. A general modeling approach that assumes an exponential demand function and fixed release times in the remaining channels is provided. Detailed illustration using three different movie types demonstrates that a high revenue-generating movie should be released online just prior to its home video release, while the online release of an average or below-average movie should coincide with their withdrawal from the theaters. Sensitivity analyses of the results are also displayed and give the circumstances under which a different online release time is warranted. The analysis suggests, among other things, that if a movie has an excellent opening strength and is able to sustain its revenues quite well, it would be more profitable to release the movie online a few weeks before it is withdrawn from the theaters. Additionally, the standard outcomes generated by the model are found to be sensitive to any online per-unit price change.     

The effects of eWOM volume and valence on product sales – an empirical examination of the movie industry

The present research examines how quantitative and qualitative aspects – volume and valence – of eWOM on various social media platforms in the movie industry, along with other forms of marketing communications (e.g. advertising expenditure), predict box office and DVD sales for pre- and post-periods of movie releases. The analysis of aggregated big data from multiple sources – 65,665,859 social media postings from blogs, forums, news, and Twitter, Nielsen’s ad expenditure data, and Rotten Tomatoes ratings for 170 movies—revealed that the explanatory power of the model for box office revenue and DVD sales mostly comes from the volume, rather than valence, of eWOM.     

我国棉花进口市场集中度与价格弹性的研究

我国是国际棉花市场上最重要的贸易主体之一,棉花也是我国需要大量进口的大宗商品。本文采用进口市场集中度指标分析表明我国棉花进口来源市场高度集中;运用回归分析法测算我国棉花自不同来源国家进口的价格弹性,并用边际分析方法研究进口价格弹性在我国棉花进口来源变化中所起的作用。结果表明我国棉花进口来源逐渐集中于具有进口价格弹性优势的国家,这样有利于节约我国棉花进口总支出、平均支出和应对价格高涨风险。     

Does Final Market Demand Elasticity Influence the Location of Export Processing? Evidence from Multinational Decisions in China

Given the importance many developing countries attach to attracting foreign investors engaged in export‐processing activities, surprisingly little is known about the sensitivity of these investors to local wage differences and the role played by final product market conditions. Using data on 2,884 foreign‐invested manufacturing projects in China, we estimate the importance of host province wages to firm’s location choice and investigate how this sensitivity varies with demand conditions facing the industry in China’s largest export market, the United States. We use the profit function to show theoretically that firms’ ability to pass wage costs through to final markets matters for location choice and we test the implications of the theory using a control‐function technique for conditional logit developed by Petrin and Train . As predicted, we find that investors facing more elastic demand in the US market are more sensitive to wages across export‐processing locations. Taking both the factor intensity of the activity and final market demand elasticity into account, we find that investors producing homogenous goods, such as metals, chemicals, and food processing, are more likely to be attracted by relatively low wages than those producing differentiated goods. We also find that while OECD investors are more responsive to wage differences than are investors from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau, they are less likely to choose a location that has received a large share of prior foreign investment.     

供给因素、结构变化、汇率与我国的双边贸易

基于考虑供给因素、结构变化的出口决定模型,采用两方程方法和单方程方法研究了外国GDP、中国GDP、结构变化、汇率与我国17个双边贸易之间的关系。研究表明:供给因素、结构变化对我国双边贸易有重要影响,供给因素对我国与美、澳、马、巴、新、泰、加进口及出口的影响存在严重的不对称性,结构变化对我国与德、印、加进口及出口的影响存在严重的不对称性,汇率对中国对15个贸易伙伴国出口与进口的影响存在严重的不对称性。采用出口除进口表示贸易收支做法的单方程方法的研究存在严重错误。经济增长模式对双边贸易有重要影响,人民币升值对我国双边贸易不平衡有一定的矫正作用,对改善我国双边贸易不平衡的国别分布有较大的积极作用。     

Political economy of the US–Mexican tomato trade agreement

We develop a political economy model to analyse the US–Mexican tomato trade agreement by treating the minimum import price as a negotiated settlement. We incorporate the special characteristics of the US–Mexican tomato dispute, namely trade among large countries, the role of competing fresh and processed tomato lobbies, quota revenues accruing to Mexican producers, bargaining for a minimum import price rather than a tariff, and the role of the Canadian tomato market. We show the importance of the size of the lobby group's supply, the weight elected officials' place on national welfare, and the elasticities of export supply and import demand in determining the optimal price wedge. For the United States, larger fresh tomato or cherry–grape tomato supply intensifies the degree of protection awarded to US growers, while US processors work to mitigate this effect. From Mexico's perspective, larger Mexican fresh or cherry–grape output induces a push towards free trade due to the agreement's depressing effect on Mexican prices, while Mexican processors and quota revenues exacerbate the price wedge.     

Empirical generalizations of demand and supply dynamics for movies

High financial risks in production and marketing, the hedonic nature of products, and the global cultural relevance of movies have encouraged a substantial number of researchers to analyze the success drivers of movies. This research provides empirical generalizations in managing the supply and demand of motion pictures. Prior empirical research either ignored the endogeneity of box office and screen allocation or was based on selective samples, ignoring the large amount of smaller movies released to the market. Using two large and unique samples of all movies released in two major movie markets, the US (2000–2010; n = 2098) and Germany (2002–2010; n = 1360), we extend prior research and present empirical generalizations and new fields of research.     

The long-term box office performance of sequel movies

With a 26-year-long database of nationally distributed movies, we estimate the prevalence and effectiveness of sequels over time, while controlling for other factors that might influence demand. In particular, we examine whether the effectiveness of a strategy increases over time (possibly due to managerial learning) or decreases (possibly because its effectiveness is competed away or because of consumer satiation). After taking into account both supply side and demand side effects by using simultaneous equations, we find that sequels have a positive effect indirectly (i.e., supply side effect) through a significantly larger number of theaters showing such movies compared to non-sequel movies. In terms of direct effect (i.e., demand side effect), sequels do better than non-sequels in generating more attendance in the first week and in total. Parent movies, the movies from which sequels originate, also do better than non-sequels in terms of total attendance and first-week attendance. Interestingly, sequel movies generate less total attendance than parent movies. On the other hand, sequels generate more revenues upfront than parents. We also find that the impact of sequels on first-week attendance has been increasing over time, but the number of sequels released has not. Our follow-up analysis suggests that one reason can be due to the higher (inflation-adjusted) production budget of a sequel than of the original (i.e., the parent) movie possibly leading to a decreasing gross margin for sequels within a movie franchise.     

The NAFTA Preference and US‐Mexico Trade: Aggregate‐Level Analysis

This paper focuses on the US tariff preference afforded to Mexico relative to non‐NAFTA trading partners and evaluates the trade effects of NAFTA in a manner consistent with the idea behind a preferential trading agreement. The estimation technique exploits the time‐varying dimension of the tariff preference over 1989 to 2001. This is important because the tariff preference for Mexico into the United States market existed prior to NAFTA. Further, the NAFTA preference was phased in over time. We find that a higher US tariff preference for Mexico corresponds to increased US import demand for Mexican goods, and that a higher Mexican tariff preference for the United States corresponds to increased Mexican demand for US exports. Interestingly, import demand was more responsive to changes in the tariff preference once NAFTA was in place than it was on average.     

Are US Exports Different from China’s Exports? Evidence from Japan’s Imports

Are US exports different from China’s exports? If so, how? This article attempts to answer this question, using product‐level manufacturing import data from Japan. To make the comparison clear, this article also examines exports from the EU. The results indicate that more than 85 per cent and 83 per cent of products exported by the US and the EU, respectively, to Japan are also commonly exported from China. Both the US and the EU export products are priced higher than China’s export products, regardless of industries. This result suggests that quality differences matter in explaining the high overlap of China’s export products with US and EU export products. In some industries, however, the price differences of US and EU exports relative to China’s exports are relatively small. This result implies that either Chinese firms are upgrading the quality of their products, or US and EU firms are improving their efficiencies such that they can compete with Chinese firms.     

中国出口市场与世界进口市场的匹配性——以制造业为例

在世界经济复苏乏力、中国出口贸易增速放缓的背景下,研究中国出口市场结构与世界进口市场结构之间的匹配性具有重要的理论及现实意义。以制造业为例,在将其细分为劳动密集型、资本密集型及技术密集型的基础上,通过构建斯皮尔曼等级相关系数、收益性结构变动指数、劳伦斯指数等指标体系,对中国出口市场与世界进口市场的匹配程度和变动方向及波动幅度进行了实证研究,并与美国和日本进行比较分析,以期为中国制造业出口市场结构的优化升级提供参考。