Forget “The Nobody-Knows-Anything” It's Time for Entertainment Science!
- Publication Type:
- Thesis
- Issue Date:
- 2021
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This thesis looks at the management and marketing of entertainment products and provides insights on how to reduce the uncertainty in the entertainment products' financial performance.
Essay1 examines the impact of WOM experiential content on box-office performance at the micro level beyond the aggregate measures of WOM. Word-of-mouth (WOM) is the most important source of information for consumers while making purchase decisions and its impact has been studied extensively in the movie industry. However, a major limitation of prior online WOM research is that most studies have focused on the quantitative attributes of WOM—volume, valence, and variance— while ignoring the information conveyed by the text of reviews. To overcome this limitation the authors analyzed unstructured experiential information in the form of textual reviews and its impact on movie Box office revenue. Results show that experiential information about actors and the plot influences box-office revenue, above and beyond the quantitative WOM measures found in the literature. Furthermore, the authors find that experiential information about the performance of the actors and the quality of the plot has a stronger positive effect on box-office at the beginning of the movie life cycle before quickly fading away. Hence, as predicted by accessibility and diagnosticity theory, the impact of experiential cues saturates after the initial product launch. Overall, these findings suggest that studios can better predict movie box-office performance by monitoring review content and can also better leverage WOM by investing in acting performance and plot quality.
Essay 2 aims to quantify and generalize the impact of sequels on box-office performance through a meta-analysis. Sequels are brand extensions that are expected to offer higher returns while involving less risk. The movie industry is relying on sequels to generate more revenue as the share of sequels in the top-grossing films is on the rise. The extant movie literature has also found that sequels perform better than non-sequel movies however, the estimates of the effect vary considerably. To quantify the mean effect of sequels and determine their effectiveness, the authors integrated a total of 91 studies from 1989 until 2019 reporting 170 effects and find that sequels positively influence movie box-office performance. The sequels' short-term box-office performance is greater than long-term box-office performance due to the familiarity with the parent movie and steady over time. However, too many sequels released in a year negatively affect sequels' box-office performance providing insights for studios managers.
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