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This research investigates the impacts of movie consumers' willingness, measured by the number of people who want to watch a movie, on the relationship between event marketing and box office revenue. This study aims to provide marketers with practical event marketing strategies and tactics to improve box office revenue.

Panel data was collected for 1,141 movies released in China from year 2014–2018 for a total of 12 weeks, spanning 4 weeks before and 8 weeks after release. The mediating effect of consumers' willingness on the relationship between event marketing and box office revenue was tested through a stepwise method and the generalized least squares method based on random effects.

Movie consumers' willingness mediates the effect of event marketing and box office revenue. Both movie consumers' willingness and box office revenue follow an inverted U-shaped distribution against the intensity of event marketing. From the second week before release to the first week after release, intensified event marketing enhances box office revenue. Various types and intensities of event marketing should be employed in different periods of time to increase the total box office revenue.

This research ignores the costs of various types of event marketing for different movies. Future research could consider the cost-effectiveness of event marketing.

The findings of this paper provide meaningful insights on event marketing strategies for practitioners.

This study contributes to the field by verifying movie consumers' willingness as a mediator between event marketing and box office revenue. The study also provides empirical evidences on effective types and reasonable intensities of event marketing over the whole lifecycle of movies.

Previous literature on WOM has consistent findings on the positive and significant effect of WOM volume on product sales, but the literature on WOM valence has been mixed. In this study, the authors aim to explain the reason for the mixed effect of WOM valence on product sales by considering heterogeneous characteristics of products, especially in the movie market, by segmenting products into mainstream and non‐mainstream movies.

This study uses empirical data from the motion picture industry, such as box office revenue, WOM volume and valence, and other variables of movie characteristics. The hypothesis is tested using OLS and panel data analysis in econometric methods.

The authors find a significant effect of WOM valence on box office revenue only in the case of non‐mainstream movies, which have relatively smaller marketing budgets than mainstream movies. The findings suggest that as marketing communication channels become more diverse, with larger marketing budgets, the effect of online WOM valence on product sales can be diluted. In addition, it is found that the effect of WOM volume on box office revenue is greater for mainstream movies, suggesting that consumers build higher credibility on products with larger sales or WOM volume, especially for experience goods with uncertain quality.

The findings explain the weak relationship between WOM valence and product sales, which has been controversial in the WOM literature, and broaden the understanding of the effect of WOM on product sales.

The relationship between WOM valence and sales and, consequently, the revenue of a good has not been clearly understood, considering the heterogeneous characteristics of consumers in previous literature. In this study, it is found that WOM volume and valence have different effects on product sales, corresponding to differences in product category. The findings suggest a reason for the weak relationship between WOM valence and product sales, which has been controversial in the WOM literature.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the marketing challenges facing the Nigerian movie industry – Nollywood. The paper also attempts to make a case for due recognition to this multimillion dollar industry in management research as opposed to being pigeonholed in the domain of media, film or cultural studies.

The case study benefits from a mixture of survey questionnaires, in‐depth interviews and focus groups drawing on a range of themes from Nollywood's target audience in the diasporas over a three‐year period (2005‐2007).

Explanations for why African movies – as epitomized by the case of Nollywood – continue to lack box office appeal cannot be detached from the poor marketing‐mix strategies adopted – notably weak marketing communications and poor product quality.

The paper is restricted to a convenience sample of respondents and may arguably suffer from a weakness of generalizability.

Nollywood directors, producers, distributors, marketers and all other stakeholders must organize national, regional and international networks/networking events in order to guarantee the requisite forum for shared access, ideas and more importantly technology and technical know‐how. There is also the need for skills upgrading and more robust marketing communications.

This is the first major attempt to move the discourse of cinematic consumption away from the field of media studies to general management – notably marketing. The paper exudes of a powerful message – this is not just art, it is big business!

The purpose of this paper is to provide insightful advice that can improve the practice of using consumers’ pre-launch awareness and preference (AP) changes to predict the sales of new movies.

This paper applies a new movie box-office revenue forecasting model based on consumers’ weekly AP measures, to take advantage of the industry’s practice of using weekly survey data containing the AP measures of upcoming new movies. Specifically, a sales forecasting model is developed on the basis of the theory that the combination of the nature of new product preference (positive vs negative) and the timing of new product awareness (early vs recent) influences entertainment product sales.

This paper shows that early awareness consumers are as important as late awareness consumers in determining new product sales, suggesting that more marketing resources need to be allocated earlier than currently practiced. This paper also shows that when negative preferences dominate positive preferences well ahead of a product’s release, marketing efforts cannot overcome the negative sentiment of the market. Finally, the empirical application illustrates that three consumer segments varying in product expertise and consumption frequency reveal different AP patterns among high-, medium- and low-performance products.

This paper is intended to provide insightful advice that can improve the AP-based approach in entertainment industries. Toward that end, the authors emphasize two major aspects in association with new entertainment product sales: rethinking survey-based AP measures and examining heterogeneous consumer segments’ differential AP patterns.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the importance, assigned by audiences, of factors such as people, movie features, script, price, promotion, and distribution channels (defined as a movie marketing mix) on the audience’s buying intentions, as well as the impact of their buying intentions on word of mouth (WOM). In addition, the intention is to explore the relationship between the preference and frequency of people’s cultural event attendance with their buying intention and the relationship between people with extroverted personalities and WOM.

The data were collected from 904 valid surveys conducted in Beyoglu, one of the important centres for the culture and art life of the Istanbul.

The results show that promotion, actor or actress, and diversity of distribution channels have a positive effect on people’s purchase intention. In addition, the frequency of attendance to cultural events can be determinative of the audience and helpful for industry professionals.

Although there have been a number of studies that examine the simple relationships among some of these variables (movie marketing mix, attendance, purchase intention, WOM, extraversion), there is still a gap in the literature with regard to these variables in an integrated framework. Considering these variables in the same model and analysing the effects of each dimension individually provides a better explanation of consumer purchase intention and post-purchase behaviour in the movie industry. This study extends the previous research by incorporating the concept of movie marketing and consumption by improving the scale with data collected in Istanbul, Turkey.

Social media commerce provides a convenient way for users to share information and interact with each other. Few studies, however, have examined the effect of marketing messages and consumer engagement behaviors on the economic performance of marketing. This study, therefore, explored the economic performance of social media in terms of marketing messages and consumer engagement.

Using ordinary least squares regression and data collected from Weibo and Maoyan, this study analyzed the effects among marketing messages, consumer engagement and movie ticket sales.

The results indicated that marketing messages on Weibo had a positive effect on box office revenues, while consumer engagement behavior (whether personal or interactive) did not affect box office revenues. The results suggested that marketing messages on social media have more salient effects for predicting economic performance than consumer engagement behaviors.

This study underscores the importance of social media in consumer purchasing behavior. The findings also extend the literature related to commerce and product message design on social media platforms.

We examine the role of financial and nonfinancial performance measures in managing revenues derived from life cycles of a type of intellectual property products − motion pictures.

Our study focuses on the first two markets in which audiences can watch a motion picture – the upstream theatrical market and the downstream home video market. We combine data collected from numerous public and proprietary sources and form a final sample of 654 motion pictures. Then we perform regression analysis on the data.

First, three measures of a movie’s performance in the theatrical market, opening box office revenue, peak rank, and weeks at the peak rank, have positive effects on subsequent revenues in the home video market. Second, the same set of performance measures also predicts the motion picture’s life span in the theatrical market. Third, when the actual life span of a motion picture in the theatrical market deviates from its predicted value, the total return on investment in the motion picture decreases.

We do not have data on other downstream markets related to motion pictures, such as pay-per-view and online video streaming.

This study suggests that the public and proprietary data can be used to inform managerial decisions regarding intellectual property product life cycles.

This is the first accounting study that directly examines life cycle revenues of intellectual property products. We also extend literature on revenue driver and revenue management research to the product level.

The motion picture industry is a cultural and creative industry. Unlike its US counterpart, the Chinese motion picture industry is still developing. Therefore, learning from the US market, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the business model of Chinese movies from the perspective of new product diffusion.

Based on 66 movies released in the US and 21 movies released in China, this paper first compares the diffusion curves of Chinese and US movies through the movie life cycle and box office trends. Next, it analyzes the moviegoing behaviors of Chinese and US audiences based on the innovation and imitation coefficients in the Bass model. Finally, it compares the attention to information of Chinese and US audiences from the perspective of interpersonal word-of-mouth (WOM).

In the USA, a movie’s highest weekly box office is usually in its opening week, followed by a weekly decline in revenue; in China, there is no difference in box office performance between the first two weeks, but a weekly decline in revenue similarly follows. US audiences pay more attention to advertisements for movies than WOM recommendations, while Chinese people pay more attention to WOM recommendations. Neither the Chinese nor the US market differs in the volume of WOM between the first week before release and the opening week, and these two weeks are the most active period of WOM in both markets.

During the production phase for Chinese movies, we should satisfy opinion leaders’ needs. During the distribution phase, we should not only focus on market spending before the movie’s release, but also increase market spending in the opening week. During the theater release phase, we should stimulate WOM communication between moviegoers and thereby attract many more opinion seekers.

Few studies have investigated the Chinese motion picture industry from the perspective of new products. This paper compares and analyzes the diffusion of Chinese and US movies using the Bass model of new product diffusion, providing systematic theoretical guidelines for the commercial operation of the Chinese motion picture industry.

This paper seeks to assess how different segments in the movie market respond to three marketing drivers, namely prices, product availability and viewing channels (including piracy).

A total of 12 conjoint profiles were designed with various levels of the three marketing drivers and a questionnaire was administered to respondents from a major Canadian city. Respondents were then segmented by their channels of acquiring pirated movies and a regression model was run to test for their potential differential responses to the three marketing drivers.

The data show that consumers who had recently obtained hardcopies of pirated movies were more price‐sensitive than other consumers. On the other hand, consumers who had obtained pirated movies through two channels, namely purchasing hardcopies and downloading softcopies, were not as eager as non‐pirates to see the movie as soon as it was released or in a movie theater. Surprisingly, the different segments appear to place a similar value on viewing a movie on an authentic DVD as compared to a pirated one.

As respondents were from a convenience sample in a Canadian city, further research should replicate and extend this study in other geographical markets.

The findings demonstrate the need to segment consumers of pirated products by the channels of acquisition and suggest that the movie industry's attempt to portray piracy as being immoral or unethical has had limited impact.

This paper sheds light on the differences between consumers who obtained pirated movies through purchasing hardcopies and those through the internet.

Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) is very important for consumer decision making; previous international product diffusion studies have investigated eWOM and cultural factors that influence consumers’ acceptance of new products, but they have not adequately compared the differences in these factors between the USA and China. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to compare the impact of eWOM on consumer choices in China and the USA. The authors addressed the following questions: What are the cross-cultural differences in consumers’ eWOM behavior between the USA and China: Which genres of Hollywood movies have better cross-culture predictability in terms of box office performance; and What factors affect the success of Hollywood movies in entering the Chinese market?

Real eWOM data were collected from two online movie review websites, IMDb.com (the USA) and Douban.com (China), from January 2010 to December 2015. In addition, box office revenue information was collected from BoxOfficeMojo.com. The authors used an independent sample t-test to check whether the differences in consumers’ eWOM behavior between China and the USA and different types of movie lead to cultural discount differences. Furthermore, a log-linear regression model is used to examine which factors influence the commercial success of new movies.

There are specific similarities and differences between the American and Chinese movie markets. First, the results show that American consumers are more engaged in online review systems and tend to submit extreme reviews, but Chinese consumers tend to submit moderate reviews on movies, and the eWOM variance there is smaller than in the USA. Second, genres are useful variables as indicators of movie content; the genres of comedy and drama are not popular in the Chinese market. Finally, eWOM variance has a positive impact on box office in China, but eWOM variance has no impact on the US box office. In addition, the interactive effect of the average rating and eWOM variance on sales is positively significant in China. Importantly, the one-star reviews have a negative impact on the Chinese box office, but it has no impact on US box office.

Understanding how cultural factors influence consumer eWOM communication will help managers to better apply this new marketing communication tool to create more aggressive and targeted promotional plans. Marketers may use eWOM behavior to better respond to and target consumers to overcome barriers to the selection of their products by consumers. Therefore, more effective management of eWOM can improve the acceptance of and preference for products in different cultural consumer groups.

This study expands the existing body of knowledge on eWOM and international marketing literature. Clearly, culture is an important determinant of eWOM’s impact on sales. In addition, it provides strategic direction and practical implications for eWOM communication management in cross-cultural settings.