Quality, advertisement and social influences in cultural market

The nature of cultural products makes their success very unpredictable (de Vany, 2006). Nevertheless, producers mobilize marketing strategies in order to increase the visibility of their products and thus reduce this uncertainty. We conduct an empirical analysis of the promotion of films released in French theaters in 2009 (n=495). We assess the impact of advertising spending (as measured by Kantar Media) on box office, and compare it with other variables such as film critic and word of mouth. We perform a regression analysis, which leads to several results: advertising spending is the main determinant of the success of a movie; but films distributed by major companies have a better chance of success. Word-of-mouth and film critic have a significant effect on sales made after the release week. Eventually, we observe that the link between advertising expenses and success is stronger for large and small film budgets, but gets weaker for medium budgets - which are spent by “large independent” companies.

2013

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. j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / i j r e s m a r Please cite this article as: Clement, M., et al., Empirical generalizations of demand and supply dynamics for movies, Intern. J. of Research in Marketing (2013), http://dx.

Marketing Letters, 2017

We analyze the contents of print ads in the motion picture industry (e.g., number of reviews quoted in the ad, the presence of a top reviewer, size of the ad, star, director, etc.). We find that external validation (a recommendation by a top reviewer) is more important to revenues than the informative content of the ad.

Journal of Marketing, 2010

2000

This research investigates how movie ratings from professional critics, amateur communities, and viewers themselves influence key movie performance measures (i.e., movie revenues and new movie ratings). Using movie-level data, the authors find that high early movie revenues enhance subsequent movie ratings. They also find that high advertising spending on movies supported by high ratings maximizes the movie's revenues. Furthermore, they empirically show that sequel movies tend to reap more revenues but receive lower ratings than originals. Using individual viewer-level data, this research highlights how viewers' own viewing and rating histories and movie communities' collective opinions explain viewer satisfaction. The authors find that various aspects of these ratings explain viewers' new movie ratings as a measure of viewer satisfaction after controlling for movie characteristics. Furthermore, they find that viewers' movie experiences can cause them to become more critical in ratings over time. Last, they find a U-shaped relationship between viewers' genre preferences and genre-specific movie ratings for heavy viewers.

Proc. First World …, 2006

Why are shares of the motion picture market so unequally distributed? Do the different qualities of the movies account for such an enormous difference in the market shares? Are mass media campaigns so effective to convince almost all movie visitors to see the same movies? Or are there social processes that affect the movie visitors' decision making and direct them to visit the same movies?

Journal of Reviews on Global Economics, 2016

This paper investigates the financial performance of movies in China, a fast-growing commercial exhibition marketplace. Movie sales and Chinese market returns, movie characteristics and cultural contexts are operationalized in ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and quantile regression models to explain the highly varied acceptance across different products released since 2009. The samples comprise most of the widely released motion pictures in China. We posit that production budgets, sequels, audience ratings, cultural contexts and movie genres can significantly account for the variation in box office (BO) revenue and sales-revenue-to-cost (SRTC) within the Chinese market. Movies produced in countries with similar cultural contexts capture more audiences measured by box office proceeds, but it is noteworthy that SRTC falls at a decreasing rate as cultural differences increase. An increase in production budget generates more sales in China, but reduces the SRTC ratios with other factors controlled. Although aggregate cinema attendance may fluctuate with releasing date, this is not always true for an individual movie's financial success. Quantile regressions provide us with a richer characterization of the relationship, enabling us to analyze the entire distribution of box office proceeds and SRTC ratios, as well as their determinants at key quantiles.

2005

We model the consumption life cycle of theater attendance for single movies by taking into account the size of the targeted group and the effect of social interactions. We provide an analytical solution of such model, which we contrast with empirical data from the film industry obtaining good agreement with the diverse types of behaviors empirically found. The model grants a quantitative measure of the valorization of this cul- tural good based on the relative values of the coupling between agents who have watched the movie and those who have not. This represents a measurement of the observed quality of the good that is extracted solely from its dynamics, independently of critics reviews.

New Journal of Physics, 2006

We develop a 'basic principles'model which accounts for the primary life cycle consumption of films as a social coordination problem in which information transmission is governed by word of mouth. We fit the analytical solution of such a model to aggregated consumption data from the film industry and derive a quantitative estimator of its quality based on the structure of the life cycle.

Journal of Cultural Economics, 2008

Previous studies of the movie industry have raised questions concerning the problematic relationship between the success-related aspects of artistic excellence and commercial appeal. The present article proposes that-when the former is measured by industry recognition (Oscars and other awards) and the latter by market performance (box office and video rentals) and when the former hinges on the evaluative judgments of reviewers and consumers (ratings of excellence) and the latter on the level of buzz among these audience members (amount of attention, word of mouth, or click of mouse)-the two phenomena are essentially separable as independent paths to conceptually distinct and empirically uncorrelated aspects of motion-picture success. An analysis of data for 190 movies from the year 2003 shows that reviewer-and-consumer evaluations and buzz respond differently to a film's marketing clout (production budget, opening screens, and opening box office) and that these audience responses contribute independently to a film's industry recognition and market performance along two separable paths. These findings suggest various implications for movie marketers, film producers, actors or actresses, and other members of the motion-picture industry.