Consumption of Movie Experience: Cognitive and Affective Approaches

This study examines the structural relationships among film quality, value, and satisfaction on the perspective of moviegoers. The experience economy concept is employed as the theoretical framework, where moviegoers’ cognitive and affective evaluations are projected in fulfilling their perceived value. Moviegoers’ perceived movie attributes and experiences are assessed to evaluate the moviegoers’ satisfactions through functional and emotional values. In particular, this article investigates how four dimensions of experience mediate the effect of movie attributes on perceived value and satisfaction. A total of 565 samples were analyzed with structural equation modeling to investigate the relationship of ‘quality—value—satisfaction.’ The findings show that two movie attributes (core and peripheral) affect three dimensions of experience (entertainment, educational, and escapist), which in turn influence functional and emotional values, and moviegoers’ satisfaction. The results also confirm that emotional value is a more powerful predictor of moviegoers’ satisfaction than functional value.     

The Effectiveness of a Buzz Marketing Approach Compared to Traditional Advertising: An Exploration

Marketers are now willing to go anyplace they can find a captive audience to espouse the virtues of their products. The success of the “buzz” marketing approach is linked to the consumer being lured into doing the advertising by spreading the message to others. This study compares students’ responses to a traditional advertising and a buzz approach. Using a factor analysis to identify variables, the results show that subjects perceive a buzz approach to be more influential than a traditional advertising. However, they do not perceive a buzz approach to be authentic. This finding is consistent with practitioners’ argument that, although a buzz approach may be effective in the short-term, once consumers recognize its selling intent, the program may have a “boomerang effect.”     

An empirical investigation of director selection in movie preproduction: A two-sided matching approach

This paper examines how movie producers recruit directors in the preproduction phase as mutual choices in a two-sided matching model. It conceptualizes that movie attributes and filmmaker characteristics determine the matching outcomes (“who directed which movie”) and in turn indirectly affect movie box office. We exploit a dataset of 4,807 feature films from 1990 to 2010 to examine empirically the complementarities between the movie/producer side and the director side in terms of movie budget, filmmaker track records and social relations. A series of simulations suggest that social relations facilitate positive assortative matching. Further simulation analyses are conducted to quantify the financial implications of movie–director mismatches, as well as the indirect effects of production budget and producer characteristics. The simulation results show that: a) the financial implications of having a mismatched director can be substantial; and b) the indirect effect of production budget and producer characteristics affect movie box office in an interactive manner. These findings can help filmmakers to better understand the financial impacts of movie–director choices and make more informed decisions at the early phase of preproduction.     

Impact of star and movie buzz on motion picture distribution and box office revenue

This study contributes to research on the impact that consumer buzz has on movie distribution and box office success by examining the impact of buzz generated about the individual stars and about the movie itself. The results indicate that movie buzz is instrumental in boosting box office revenue throughout the theatrical release, not just in the later run, as has been suggested in previous studies. Star buzz can enhance box office receipts during the opening week and can contribute to the public's anticipation of the movie pre-release. However, early buzz can have a negative impact on revenue during subsequent weeks if the movie fails to resonate with the audiences. Model simulations reveal that, even for poorly received films, the overall impact of star buzz is positive because the initial revenue boost normally outweighs the later decline. Thus, this study empirically demonstrates the positive impact of star buzz on revenue, which helps shed light on the long-standing debate regarding the importance of star participation in the success of a movie.     

The U.S. Motion Pictures Industry: An Empirical Approach

We hypothesize that the U.S. motion pictures industry is structured so that star presence increases box office receipts and (less so) admissions, but places Ricardian limits on the output of blockbusters. The few dominant studios (majors) rely on a modified star system to generate supra-normal box office by stimulating admissions at exhibitors. Rising costs (from stars and their promotion) are required for rising revenues; that is, the majors gain revenue only at higher costs. Although the industry has unique features, the empirical results are surprisingly relevant to other industries.     

基于回归分析的中国电影票房影响因素研究

本文通过对国外文献的阅读和整理,并结合中国现实情况,选取了影响电影票房的四个因素,即电影类型、电影评分、演员号召力和电影产地。以从2003年至2012年(截止至4月8日)十年间中国电影票房年度排行榜上排名前十名的影片票房为因变量,以电影类型、电影评分、演员号召力和电影产地为自变量,通过逐步回归分析构建了影响电影票房因素的多元回归模型,并对回归结果予以分析和解释,以期对国内相对较为缺乏的电影产业实证研究有所助益,并就未来研究方向提出设想。     

Perceptions of Accountants’ Ethics: Evidence from Their Portrayal in Cinema

This article examines popular representations of accountants’ ethics by studying their depiction in cinema. As a medium that both reflects and shapes public opinion, films provide a useful resource for exploring the portrayal of the profession’s ethics. We employ a values theoretical framework to analyze 110 movie accountants on their basic ethical character, ethical behavior, and values. We use factor analysis to reduce 22 personal characteristics to five factors encompassing two terminal and three instrumental value sets, which we relate to ethical behavior. Findings indicate that in popular cinema, the ethical behavior of accountants is positively associated with intrinsic terminal values, but negatively related to competency (instrumental) values.     

Updates management in mobile applications: iTunes versus Google Play

This paper focuses on a specific strategy that developers of mobile applications may use to stimulate demand: The release of updates. We develop a theoretical analysis that shows that developers have incentives to release updates when experiencing a drop in performance. The predictions of the model are then tested using an unbalanced panel of top 1,000 apps in iTunes and Google Play for five European countries. We estimate that while in iTunes the release of an update stimulates a 26% increase in download growth, in Google Play updates play a less significant role. This difference is partly due to systematic differences in apps and in developers operating in the two stores (“selection effect”), and partly to a lack of quality control on apps and updates in Google Play (“quality check effect”). These findings highlight the crucial importance of an appropriate management of updates as well as the relevance of institutional characteristics of the app stores.     

Effectiveness of brand placement: New insights about viewers

Since traditional media have become saturated, the technique of product placement has been attracting growing interest. This research explores new insights concerning viewers' reactions during a second viewing of a movie. A sample of 3532 French viewers of DVDs has been used to link the way the movie was chosen, viewed and appreciated (or not) with a spontaneous brand placement recall, the day after the film was watched at home. Results make a contribution to strengthening professionals' interest in the technique, and to adding to academic knowledge of the topic. A first viewing of the movie at the cinema improves brand placement recall, as does watching the movie at home on a large home cinema screen. Such an improvement also occurs when a DVD movie is chosen either because of the movie director or when the viewer likes the movie.     

Substitution or Promotion? The Impact of Price Discounts on Cross-Channel Sales of Digital Movies

Technology is transforming the marketing function in many ways, and this transformation is particularly apparent for information goods such as movies where digital technologies provide marketers with new distribution channels, which in turn create new opportunities for cross-channel effects. However, these digital channels also provide researchers with new opportunities to measure micro-level customer behavior to understand the impact of cross-channel effects in real-world settings.In this paper, we study cross-channel effects between movies sold in digital purchase (commonly known as Electronic Sell Through or EST) and digital rental (commonly known as Video-On-Demand or VOD) markets. We do this using a unique sales dataset from a major digital movie retailer provided by a major movie studio. Our analysis takes advantage of a 14-week field experiment that allows us to measure the impact of price discounts on own- and cross-channel sales. We use this experiment to estimate own and cross price elasticities, whether price discounts cannibalize future sales, and most importantly whether price discounts in one channel affect sales for the same product in a presumably competing channel.Our analysis indicates that digital movie consumers are highly sensitive to price promotions. However, we also find that, contrary to expectations, price promotions in a digital sales channel for a movie do not seem to cannibalize digital rentals. Indeed, our results suggest that, if anything, price promotions for digital movie sales can increase digital rentals. We explore a variety of explanations for this counterintuitive result, including the possibility that the ease of information transmission online through third-party websites, blogs, and online discussion areas may create information spillovers such that price discounts in one channel may increase product awareness in other competing sales channels. From a managerial perspective, our results suggest that cross-channel cannibalization can be reduced or even reversed in the presence of information spillovers, and that there are many new opportunities for marketers to directly measure these cross-channel effects using experimental data from online platforms.