Box Office Sales Research Articles

‘We resolve our own sorrows’: screening comfort women in Chinese documentary films

This article adds a critical lens to the vicissitudinous public remembrance of the comfort women in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the oscillating representations of comfort women in Chinese documentary films. First, it probes how the violated bodies of comfort women on the screen constantly challenge and disrupt the entrenched gender norms in the interstices of the PRC’s official paradigms of “national humiliation” and “national greatness.” Then, it examines the distinctive film esthetics and documentary ethics of Chinese director Guo Ke’s documentary films Thirty Two (2014) and Twenty Two (2017), given that the latter harvested record-breaking box office sales and incited heated online discussions of the comfort women issue in China. In particular, this article scrutinizes how Guo’s esthetically appealing, politically non-confrontational, and ethically provocative approach helps constitute survivors’ private, gendered memories and encourages the viewers to contemplate his minimalist narratives. In a broader sense, this article contributes to the discussions of gender, nationalism, war remembrance, and documentary filmmaking in contemporary China.

Let’s not talk about men: When meaningful female-to-female interaction and dialogue drive higher box office sales

ABSTRACT This study explores two unique aspects of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) from the perspective of gender diversity in the field of motion pictures and the dimension of inclusion utilizing the Bechdel-Wallace Test (BWT). A production may pass the BWT if a conversation between two women is not about men, hence the conversation is deemed meaningful. Using a consumer-driven data set, we find a positive effect of the BWT on international and total box office sales. The results also show a unique result in the years following the modern #MeToo movement, leading to enhanced box office returns for domestic, international, and total box office sales. Therefore, in addition to contributing to efforts to better understanding the impact of the addition of gender diversity and inclusion on motion picture performance, female characters’ meaningful conversation with other females will likely lead to higher return on producers’ investment in motion pictures. Practical implications and contributions to feminist film theory and theory of planned behavior are discussed.

The dynamic impact of electronic word‐of mouth on movie box office sales: Based on innovation diffusion theory

AbstractElectronic word of mouth (eWOM) is one of the most influential forms of information and strongly affects customers' willingness to adopt new innovations. Using four metrics of eWOM from YouTube—the numbers of likes, dislikes, views, and comments—this study empirically investigates the dynamic relationships between eWOM and movie box office sales based on innovation diffusion theory. The results show that the innovation diffusion process is applicable in the movie industry. That is, the impacts of the number of views, likes, dislikes, and comments for movie trailers on YouTube on movie box office revenue are first increasing and then gradually decreasing.

Analysis of China’s Film Industry in 2022

Abstract In 2022, the COVID-19 epidemic significantly affected the effective supply of films in China, whereby the market fluctuated, and box-office sales decreased. However, China’s resilient film industry continued to persevere with quality products being released. New government policies were launched to help the industry’s enterprises alleviate their difficulties. Due to these policies, film enterprises endured to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and survive the difficult times. While the top-grossing films supported the market, a number of small and medium budget films were successful, with the reputation of young filmmakers growing rapidly. Creating healthy industry ecology, rebuilding the confidence of practitioners, giving full play to the main role of the market, increasing the effective supply of diversified products, and promoting the vertical and horizontal integration of film within other industries are of great significance to the recovery of both the Chinese film industry and its market in the post-epidemic period.

Unifying Algorithmic and Theoretical Perspectives: Emotions in Online Reviews and Sales

Emotion artificial intelligence, the algorithm that recognizes and interprets various human emotions beyond valence (positive and negative polarity), is still in its infancy but has attracted attention from industry and academia. Based on discrete emotion theory and statistical language modeling, this work proposes an algorithm to enable automatic domain-adaptive emotion lexicon construction and multidimensional emotion detection in texts. Using a large-scale dataset of China’s movie market from 2012 to 2018, we constructed and validated a domain-specific emotion lexicon and demonstrated the predictive power of eight discrete emotions (i.e., surprise, joy, anticipation, love, anxiety, sadness, anger, and disgust) in online reviews on box office sales. We found that representing overall emotions through discrete emotions yields higher prediction accuracy than valence or latent emotion variables generated by topic modeling. To understand the source of the predictive power from a theoretical perspective and to test the cross-culture generalizability of our prediction study, we further conducted an experiment in the U.S. movie market based on theories on emotion, judgment, and decision-making. We found that discrete emotions, mediated by perceived processing fluency, significantly affect the perceived review helpfulness, which further influences purchase intention. Our work shows the economic value of emotions in online reviews, generates insight into the mechanism of their effects, and has managerial implications for online review platform design, movie marketing, and cinema operations.

The Effect of Online Reviews on Movie Box Office Sales

Due to the rapidly growth of social media, potential moviegoers always depend on the online reviews to make their purchase decisions. Film companies need to know what aspects of reviews will drive sales up or down. This study proposes a framework which integrates an aspect-based sentiment analysis and econometric modeling to explore the relationships between the information features in online reviews and movie ticket sales. The empirical results indicate that whereas the rating does not matter to moviegoers and does not affect movie revenues, additional textual review, both positive and negative contents, does have a positive impact on moviegoers, and further prompts the movie revenues. These findings have significant implications for movie producers as well as advertisers to target promotions at their audience accordingly.

Imported Sophistication: The Ballets Russes Tours of the 1930s–50s and Toronto's Quest for Cultural Significance

Imported Sophistication: The Ballets Russes Tours of the 1930s–50s and Toronto's Quest for Cultural Significance

Box office sales and social media: A cross-platform comparison of predictive ability and mechanisms

This paper aims to determine the power of social media data (Facebook and Twitter) in predicting box office sales, which platforms, data types and variables are the most important and why. To do so, we compare several models based on movie data, Facebook data, and Twitter data. We benchmark these model comparisons using various prediction algorithms. Next, we apply information-fusion sensitivity analysis to evaluate which variables are driving the predictive performance. Our analysis shows that social media data significantly increases the predictive power of traditional box office prediction models. Facebook data clearly outperform Twitter data and including user-generated content next to marketer-generated always improves predictive power. Our sensitivity analysis reveals that volume and valence based combination variables pertaining to Facebook comments are the most important variables. Furthermore, we provide an in-depth analysis of the potential mechanisms driving differential predictive ability of Facebook and Twitter. Our findings suggest that Twitter has less of an impact on box office sales than Facebook because Twitter users have less source credibility than Facebook users. Our results are important for practitioners, marketers and academics who want to employ social media data for box office sales predictions.

DeMille-the-Businessman and the Mini-Me Mirroring of Samson in Young Saul withinSamson and Delilah

Legendary producer-director Cecil B. DeMille was a master of the American biblical epic and a devout Hollywood businessman whose films inspired numerous extra-cinematic products plus screen characters designed to match market demographics whilst promoting public piety. For example, his main biblical protagonists within his family-friendly Samson and Delilah were crafted to appeal to adult audiences, but it is argued that DeMille also meticulously crafted young Saul (Russell Tamblyn) as a mini-me mirror of Samson (Victor Mature) to directly appeal to his youthful audiences, thereby assisting box office sales and helping shape US Christian culture. DeMille’s filmmaker status, businessman background, and ten Samson-Saul parallels are explicated here, guided methodologically by humanist film criticism plus a selective review of the critical literature. This original investigation reveals that DeMille was a far more insightful, creative, and business-savvy filmmaker than previously acknowledged. Further research into DeMille studies, biblical epics, and the emerging interdisciplinary field of religion and film is recommended.

Investigating the effects of textual reviews from consumers and critics on movie sales

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the sales impact of different types of online word-of-mouth based on their source (user vs critic) and form (structured vs unstructured).Design/methodology/approachThe paper proposed a model by adopting the heuristic-systematic perspective of information processing and tested it using online movie reviews collected from Rotten Tomatoes. A unique dataset was constructed, which matched critic reviews and user reviews with metadata such as box-office sales and advertisement spending for 90 movies. Sentiment information from the textual contents of both user and critic reviews were text-mined and extracted. Data analyses were used to compare the box-office responsiveness of four types of reviews: user numeric ratings, user text reviews, critic numeric ratings and critic text reviews.FindingsCritic reviews and user reviews influence sales through different forms: while user reviews impact sales through their aggregate numeric ratings, critic reviews exert their impact through textual narratives.Practical implicationsThis study provides managerial implications to businesses on how to allocate their resources on different social media-related marketing strategies to maximize the economic value of online user-generated information.Originality/valueThe major contribution of this study is to extend the current understanding of the sales impact of online reviews to their textual aspect, as well as investigate how these textual narratives play different roles when offered by critics and users.

Forecasting Cinema Attendance at the Movie Show Level: Evidence from Poland

Abstract Background: Cinema programmes are set in advance (usually with a weekly frequency), which motivates us to investigate the short-term forecasting of attendance. In the literature on the cinema industry, the issue of attendance forecasting has gained less research attention compared to modelling the aggregate performance of movies. Furthermore, unlike most existing studies, we use data on attendance at the individual show level (179,103 shows) rather than aggregate box office sales. Objectives: In the paper, we evaluate short-term forecasting models of cinema attendance. The main purpose of the study is to find the factors that are useful in forecasting cinema attendance at the individual show level (i.e., the number of tickets sold for a particular movie, time and cinema). Methods/Approach: We apply several linear regression models, estimated for each recursive sample, to produce one-week ahead forecasts of the attendance. We then rank the models based on the out-of-sample fit. Results: The results show that the best performing models are those that include cinema- and region-specific variables, in addition to movie parameters (e.g., genre, age classification) or title popularity. Conclusions: Regression models using a wide set of variables (cinema- and region-specific variables, movie features, title popularity) may be successfully applied for predicting individual cinema shows attendance in Poland.

Formal and Real Efficiency of Memory Policy (as Exemplified by Historical Cinematography of the Cold War Period)

The article attempts to record and evaluate formal criteria for determining the effectiveness of the Cold War era Soviet films (box office revenue in the USSR, box office sales in the socialist countries, foreign currency take, number of viewers, number of positive letters from the audience to the authorities, number of professional favorable reviews, prizes and awards, positive evaluation of the Cinema Arts Council) as a tool for implementation of “memory policy” in the Soviet Union. During the period in question, there was no adequate system for assessing ideological work in the USSR. Formal criteria mainly focused on the number of viewers, ignoring the quality of message assimilation by the audience. Through the example of Soviet historical films, the article examines the practice of building collective and cultural memory in the context of pursuing a political objective. The author also proposes a list of criteria for assessing cinema as a tool for forming long-term ideas about the past, shaping an enemy’s image, and implementing the national memory policy.

Investigating the Effects of Textual Reviews From Consumers and Critics on Movie Sales

In this study, we investigate the sales impact of different types of online word-of-mouth (WOM) based on their source (user versus critic) and form (structured versus unstructured). We propose a model by adopting the heuristic-systematic perspective and empirically test it using online movie reviews collected from Rotten Tomatoes, a review-aggregation website for film and television. We construct a unique dataset that matches critic reviews and user reviews, with metadata such as weekly box-office sales and weekly advertisement spending for 90 movies released in the U.S in 2014. In addition, we use a text-mining method to extract valuable sentiment information from the textual contents of both user and critic reviews. This dataset allows us to compare the box-office responsiveness of four types of reviews: user numeric ratings, user text reviews, critic numeric ratings, and critic text reviews. The results reveal that critic reviews and user reviews influence sales through different forms: while user reviews impact sales through their aggregate numeric ratings, critic reviews exert their impact through textual narratives. Our study provides managerial implications to businesses on how to allocate their resources on different social media-related marketing strategies to lift sales.

Naming strategies as a tool for communication: application to movie titles

Product naming is regarded as one of the most important communication decisions for firms to deliver information on their new products, particularly in the case of products with unobservable attributes, such as motion pictures, music, books, and games. Despite its importance, there has been little research on “how to name a product” as a communication decision. Hence, we propose a conceptual framework to describe naming decisions as two-stage strategic decisions. The first-stage decision involves “what kind of information to be communicated via product names,” which we call the “information choice” strategy. The second-stage decision is how to express this information through product names, which we call the “expression” strategy. We applied a two-level hierarchical Bayesian model to a data set consisting of opening weekend box-office sales, names, and release dates for 393 movies released in seven countries. Our empirical study provides useful findings on movie naming. First, the information choice for movie titles significantly impacts movies’ viewership. Second, the effects of “what to choose” depend on “how to express”. Third, significant interaction effects occur between information choice strategies and product characteristics, which implies that naming strategies depend on the product’s characteristics. One particularly noteworthy finding in this study is that although it is common sense to avoid negative wording in product names in most industries, negative content in movie titles positively impacts box-office sales.

Персоноцентризм и социоцентризм как маркеры символизации успеха в художественной реальности фильмов кинопроката США (Personocentrism and Sociocentrism as Markers of Symbolizing Success in the Artistic Reality of Film Distribution in the United States)

Russian Abstract: В центре исследовательского внимания динамика популярности персоноцентричных и социоцентричных символов успеха, выраженных содержанием популярных фильмов кинопроката США. На примере анализа массива популярных художественных фильмов 1980–2019 гг., представленных в Топ 10 лидеров кассовых сборов по статистике Box Office Mojo, предпринята попытка типологии вырабатываемых массовой культурой США мотиваций деятельности на основе диспозиции символов успеха автономной деятельности (персоноцентризм) и коллективного взаимодействия (социоцентризм). Маркирование персоноцентризма и социоцентризма (двух различных стратегий достижения успеха) в художественной реальности кинофильма предполагает определение транслируемых посредством кинокоммуникации стереотипов поведения. В основе исследования лежит метод типологии кинофильмов как персноцентричных и социоцентричных символов успеха, подразумевающий комплекс неопросных методов качественного и количественного анализа сюжетного содержания. Новизна исследования заключается как в инновационном авторском подходе к анализу социокультурных процессов, так и в интерпретации общедоступных эмпирических данных кассовых сборов кинопроката. Полученные результаты позволяет утверждать, что маркирование популярности социоцентричного либо персоноцентричного содержания фильмов в отличии от идеального образа культурного героя (в отечественной традиции — это коллективист, в американской — индивидуалист) отражает ценностную динамику символов успеха коллективного взаимодействия или автономной деятельности индивида в массовой культуре США. English Abstract: The focus of the research attention is on the dynamics of the popularity of the person-centric and socio-centric symbols of success, expressed by the content of popular films of USA film distribution. On the example of analysis of the corpus of popular feature films from 1980 to 2019, presented in the Top-10 leaders of box-office sales revenue according to Box Office Mojo statistics, the attempt of typology of motivations of activity developed by mass culture of the USA on the basis of a disposition of symbols of success of autonomous activity (personocentrism) and collective interaction (sociocentrism) is made. Marking the personocentrism and sociocentrism (two different strategies of achieving success) in the artistic reality of a movie assumes the determination of stereotypes of behavior, broadcasted by means of movie communication. The research is based on the method of a typology of movies as person-centric and socio-centric symbols of success, implying a set of non-interrogative methods of qualitative and quantitative analysis of the plot content. The novelty of the research is due to both the innovative author's approach to the analysis of sociocultural processes and interpretation of publicly available empirical data of box office film distribution. The obtained results suggest that the marking of the popularity of socio-centric or person-centric content of films in contrast to the ideal image of a cultural hero (in the national tradition - a collectivist, in the American - an individualist) reflects the value dynamics of the symbols of the success of collective interaction or autonomous activity of the individual in the mass culture of the United States.

Using Online User-Generated Reviews to Predict Offline Box-Office Sales and Online DVD Store Sales in the O2O Era

With the rapid growth of e-commerce and social media, customers post online reviews on various online shopping websites and social media after their consumption experience, which generated the electronic word of mouth effect. In the online-to-offline era, companies are using multi-channels to increase customer demand, and the Effect generated by online users’ reviews plays an important role in customer demand both online and offline. Few previous studies focused on using online user-generated reviews to forecast the demand of hyper-differentiated products online and offline, which is particularly hard to predict due to the various preferences of customers and complex relationship between factors. Via predictive global sensitivity analysis, this study uses online user-generated reviews posted on social media to predict customers’ demand for hyper-differentiated products both online and offline, with an example in the film industry. We generate forecasting equations, which can successfully predict movie box office and online DVD store sales. The effectiveness and reliability of our approach are proved by the numerical studies of 22 randomly selected movies. Managers can use our method to access and analyze online users’ review data and forecast future online and offline product sales.

PRODUCT LIFE-CYCLE: NEW PRODUCTS, QUALITY, SUBSTITUTES AND ADVERTISING IN THE THEATRICAL MOVIE MARKETS

ABSTRACT In the market for US theatrical movies, there are a set of products (movies), and over time, new products appear and existing products disappear. We develop and estimate a model of the product cycle for movies and the decay of products over time to examine the effect of product quality, production cost, advertising and substitutes on the movie life cycle. Intuitively, new products should have a strong negative effect on the probability of survival of existing movies. The effect, however, is heterogeneously present only for the substitutes from some types (genres). While it is expected that good-quality movies tend to survive longer in theatres and greater level of advertising also has a positive effect, our study finds that these variables slow down the rate of decay in the life cycle of movies, particularly towards the end of the product life cycle. Keywords Product Life Cycle, Advertising, Product quality, Box office sales, movie demand, New Products

The Economic Value of Online User Reviews with Ad Spending on Movie Box-Office Sales

Our objective in this paper is to assess the values of online user reviews for movies compared with the sales impact of post-release ad spending for movies. We use weekly box-office sales and ad spending data for 304 movies released in the U.S. along with online ratings and user characteristics from a social network site for movies. By exploiting the fixed-effects two-stage instrumental variable approach to account for movie heterogeneity and simultaneous relationships among user reviews, ad spending and sales, we found that improving the volume and valence of ratings can have the equivalent effect that ad spending can provide.

Predicting Innovation Success in the Motion Picture Industry: The Influence of Multiple Quality Signals

In settings characterized by frequent product entries and rapid market exit, predicting innovation success is a difficult task. The challenge in such short life‐cycle markets is exacerbated when the offering is an experience good (i.e., product quality is not known prior to consumption). This article investigates a variety of information disequilibrium‐reducing cues that can signal a new product's quality, and posit that those cues affect knowledge of and attitude toward (i.e., customers' mindset) the item, and in turn, demand. The work draws on signaling theory in an experience good context (motion pictures) to set up a nomological net that includes three sources of quality cues as predictors of consumer demand, namely: (i) traditional prelaunch decisions (e.g., production budget, advertising budget, and sequel), (ii) volume and valence of movie critics' reviews, and (iii) text contained in the movie critics' reviews. Based on a stratified, random sample of movie introductions (n = 115), the results show that the prelaunch (structured numeric) variables alone explain a meaningful proportion of the variance in domestic box office sales. The postlaunch (structured numeric) variables, volume and valence of critics' reviews, add more explanatory power, and analyzing over two million words from the (unstructured) text of critics' reviews adds further explanatory power. This research answers a recent call to model the variety of structured and unstructured variables to predict innovation success in data‐rich environments, and thereby represents the pioneering study to combine all three sources of quality cues—(i) prelaunch, structured variables; (ii) postlaunch, structured variables; and (iii) postlaunch, unstructured variables derived from text reviews—as determinants of demand. The approach taken also substantiates film as innovation and as an interesting case of new product development. For managers in a short life‐cycle, experience good settings, the results support the inclusion of a broader “variety” of quality signals to improve forecasting in today's data‐rich environments.Practitioner PointsThe results here highlight the importance of considering both marketing decisions and expert reviews in forecasting approaches for new product launches. Exploring a nuanced approach to analyzing expert reviews seems to be particularly promising in predicting product successes and failures.This research also helps us develop a deeper understanding of the nature of critics' reviews. Beyond just “thumbs up/thumbs down” sort of recommendations, we identify specific words that are influential in making an impression on consumers and, ultimately, driving product success or failure.This work also emphasizes the challenges of predicting success in markets for short life‐cycle experience goods such as films. In these markets, expert reviews likely carry even more weight since consumers have great difficulty in assessing the product in advance.

Facilitating Public Access to the Arts: Applying the Motivation, Opportunity, and Ability Framework to the Case of the UK Royal Opera House

<p>In recent years, arts organizations in the UK have faced challenging times due to severe funding cuts from government and depressed box office sales during the recession. In the UK’s current cultural policy, ‘social impacts’ of the arts are highly emphasized and state interventions are intensified both in terms of finance and legitimacy. What is necessary for arts organizations to produce social impacts is their active provision of ‘deliberate extra activities’, which are generally conducted in the form of education, community, participation or outreach programs. The Royal Opera House (ROH) case study provides an apt example of how to exercise these activities effectively to deliver social impacts. Based on Rothchild’s theoretical Motivation, Opportunity, and Ability (MOA) framework, this study aims to find out how the UK Royal Opera House stimulated motivation among arts audiences and facilitated opportunities for them, thereby allowed them to translate motivation into action. The results show that the ROH implemented several specific strategies: ‘interest triggerings,’ ‘value creation and transmission,’ relationship building and management,’ and education. These strategies can motivate potential arts consumers to be familiar with classic arts, which lowers psychological barriers and stimulates intrinsic motivation to satisfy long-lasting and self-sustaining cultural needs. </p>