Role of motives and attributes in consumer motion picture choice

Abstract

The study focuses on consumer motion picture motives and choice criteria. Its purpose can be specified into the following objectives: (1) to examine the motivational basis of cinema attending. (2) to examine the predictive ability of movie motives and consumers' attribute importances in preference regressions of four types of movie, (3) to carry out a motion picture choice analysis by predicting audience membership with discriminant analysis. The data is based on a convinience sample of Finnish consumers ( N = 228) attending one of the following types of movie: adventures/ thrillers, human/ social dramas, sex movies, entertainment movies. The results of a group of multivariate analyses (factor analysis, canonical correlation, preference regression, and discriminant analysis) indicate that consumers attending different types of films have distinctly separate motivation bases, as well as attribute importance profiles, underlying their movie choices. Each movie type had a specific preference structure, expressed by the regression coefficients. Finally, the discriminant analysis suggests that the general motive and attribute variables are effective also in predicting motion picture choice. On balance, the results were mutually supportive and exemplify the managerial usefulness of quantitative consumer analysis also in the case of such abstract leisure products as motion pictures.