Information Systems Frontiers

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-023-10389-3

An Exploration of the Dynamics Between Social Media and Box Office

Performance
Nan Feng1,2 · Yanan Shi1 · Yadi Li1 · Dahui Li3 · Jie Zhang4 · Minqiang Li1

Accepted: 22 March 2023

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2023

Abstract
Prior studies have reported the positive impact of social media on box office performance. There is limited evidence of the
dynamics of the positive impact and how box office performance influences social media. This study examines how owned
social media (OSM) and earned social media (ESM) impact box office performance in a dynamic manner and vice versa
in the opening week of movies. We also examine how these impacts vary with firm size of a movie’s marketing company
and platform specificity of where the movie is advertised. We applied the panel vector auto-regression method to analyze a
merged dataset of 289 movies distributed in the Chinese movie market. We found that OSM and ESM had different impacts
on box office performance. Box office performance reacted faster to ESM than to OSM and the reaction lasted longer to OSM
than to ESM. In addition, the impact of OSM was more significant for large firms while ESM’s impact was more significant
for small firms. Finally, social media on specialized platforms did not have a faster impact on box office performance than
that on general platforms. The impact on general platforms did not last longer than that on specialized platform. Overall, we
recommend movie marketing firms develop tailored social media strategies by means of customizing their choices of social
media based on firm size and platform specificity.

Keywords Earned media · Owned media · Movie box office · Panel VAR

1 Introduction
* Dahui Li
dli@d.umn.edu Movie production companies, marketing agencies, and
distribution companies have adopted social media to mar-
Nan Feng
fengnan@tju.edu.cn ket and advertise their movies in addition to conventional
mass-media advertising channels, such as TV and newspa-
Yanan Shi
syn1997@tju.edu.cn pers (Eliashberg et al., 2006). These firms build their online
presence by setting up their own websites, registering their
Yadi Li
liyadi@tju.edu.cn own official accounts on popular social media (such as Twit-
ter and Facebook), and developing their brand communities
Jie Zhang
jiezhang@uta.edu across different social media platforms (e.g., Gu et al., 2013;
Oh et al., 2017; Zhu & Zhang, 2010). Such social media is
Minqiang Li
mqli@tju.edu.cn generally referred to as owned social media (OSM) (Colicev
et al., 2018; Lovett & Staelin, 2016; Stephen & Galak, 2012;
1
College of Management and Economics, Tianjin University, Xie & Lee, 2015) because firms can develop specific tac-
Tianjin 300072, China tics and strategies through the venues of OSM to effectively
2
Tianjin University (Qingdao) Ocean Engineering Research distribute marketer-generated content (MGC) to influence
Institute Co. LTD, Qingdao 266000, China consumer behavior and box office performance (Chen et al.,
3
Labovitz School of Business and Economics, University 2012; Goh et al., 2013).
of Minnesota Duluth, LSBE, 412 Library Drive, Duluth, In addition, there also exists earned social media (ESM),
MN 55812, USA
which refers to the accounts and channels owned by popu-
4
College of Business Administration, University of Texas lar personalities, movie reviewers, critics, and influencers
at Arlington, Arlington, TX 76019, USA

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who create and distribute user-generated content (UGC) and
share their content among peers and consumers on social
media platforms (such as online communities and micro-
blogs) (Colicev et al., 2018; Lovett & Staelin, 2016; Ste-
phen & Galak, 2012; Xie & Lee, 2015). Moviegoers rely on
ESM to evaluate the quality and popularity of movies and
make their decisions (Colicev et al., 2018; Stephen & Galak,
2012). After watching movies, consumers also contribute
to ESM by writing their movie reviews and critiques (Cas-
tillo et al., 2021). ESM has also become a major advertising
mechanism for movie producers and distributors (Braojos-
Gomez et al., 2015; Chintagunta et al., 2010; Hennig-Thura
et al., 2015; Luo et al., 2013; Srinivasan et al., 2016).
Among studies that have examined how social media
impacts box office performance (Braojos-Gomez et al.,
2015; Chintagunta et al., 2010; Hennig-Thura et al., 2015;
Luo et al., 2013; Srinivasan et al., 2016), most are focused
either OSM or ESM. There is less evidence about the rela-
tive strengths of OSM and ESM on box office performance
and how OSM and ESM influence box office performance
differently. Therefore, this study attempts to address such a
research gap by revealing the differential impacts of OSM
and ESM on movie box office during the opening week. A
movie’s life cycle is short after its release (Ainslie et al.,
2005), and about 40% of the movie revenue is generated dur-
ing the first week (Liu, 2006). Understanding the differences
of OSM and ESM in their impacts on movie sales is impor-
tant for firms to strategically manage their social media.
In addition, movie revenue may also be affected by
movie-specific factors such as budget, star buzz, rating,
actors, and the size of the studio (e.g., Ainslie et al., 2005;
Chen et al., 2012; Karniouchina, 2011). It is important to
reveal the contingent effects of these contextual factors on
box office performance. In this study, we examine two such
factors from the perspective of marketers or distributors that
advertise and market movies on social media, which are firm
size of the marketing firm (large vs. small) and platform
specificity of the social media platform (general platform
vs. specialized platform) where marketers advertise movies.
Prior studies have demonstrated that firm size has important
implications for the distribution and advertisement of mov-
ies. It is an indicator of the financial resources that can be
used to market movies (Ainslie et al., 2005; Eliashberg et al.,
2006) which reflects the capability and competitiveness of
the marketing firm. Firm size might be a significant bound-
ary condition that impact the dynamic relationship between
social media and movie box office. However, previous stud-
ies have only found very limited empirical evidence that
reveals the impact of firm size on movie box office (e.g.,
Chen et al., 2012; Chintagunta et al., 2010). Therefore,
we also aim to fill this research gap by examining how the
relationship between social media (OSM and ESM) on box
office varies with firm size (large vs. small).
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Information Systems Frontiers
In addition, based on the degree of their specialization,
social media platforms can be divided into general plat-
forms and specialized platforms. General platforms, such
as Facebook and Twitter, cover broad topics in social media.
Specialized platforms, such as IMDb and MSN Movies, are
dedicated to the movie industry. It is essential for marketing
firms to understand how social media on different platforms
impacts box office performance (Bogaert et al., 2021). Then,
firms can allocate budgets and resources among different
platforms for effective marketing. However, prior studies are
mostly focused on a single platform (e.g., Rui et al., 2013).
Even though the recent literature has considered the power
of different platforms (i.e., Facebook and Twitter) in predict-
ing box office sales, the heterogeneity in platform specificity
has been ignored. Our study aims to fill this gap by revealing
the impacts of general platforms and specialized platforms
on movie box office.
Overall, this study aims to answer two research questions:
(1) How do social media (OSM and ESM) influence box
office performance differently? and (2) How do firm size and
platform specificity impact these relationships? We inves-
tigate the impacts of social media (OSM and ESM) on box
office performance using the panel vector auto-regression
(PVAR) approach (Love & Zicchino, 2006). This method-
ology has not been used extensively in prior studies to our
knowledge and we feel that its capabilities will shed new
information to our knowledge of the relationship between
social media and movie sales. Different from the past con-
ventional regression-based approaches that have been unable
to reveal the dynamic relationship between social media
(OSM and ESM) and box office performance, the PVAR
method has the power to reveal how the two factors respond
to each other within a window of observation. We collected
data from multiple sources of 289 movies shown in the Chi-
nese market in the opening week as the observation window.
We then merged these movie data with social media data
collected from two different social media platforms in China.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2
provides an overview of the prior literature in relevant
areas. We develop research hypotheses in Section 3 and
describe data collection in Section 4. We then demonstrate
how PVAR was applied as the analytical tool in Section 5.
Section 6 presents the results. Finally, we discuss findings,
implications, and limitations in Section 7.
2 Literature Review
2.1 Social Media and Box Office Performance
Social media reflects the “wisdom of the crowd” where the
firm diffuses marketer-generated content and the crowd
share user-generated content among firms and individuals
Information Systems Frontiers
(Dewan & Ramaprasad, 2014; Lovett & Staelin, 2016; Song
et al., 2019; Stephen & Galak, 2012; Xie & Lee, 2015). The
increasingly diversified social media creates new opportu-
nities for firms and marketers to build relationships with
and engage consumers (Castillo et al., 2021; Feng et al.,
2020; Oh et al., 2017; Srinivasan et al., 2016). Prior stud-
ies of social media and box office performance have mainly
examined the impacts of different types of word-of-mouth
(WOM) promotion on movie sales and compared the effects
of traditional media and online media (e.g., Braojos-Gomez
et al., 2015; Liu, 2006; Luo et al., 2013). For example, Cas-
tillo et al. (2021) answered the question of whether social
media-driven customer engagement could increase movie
sales. Their research found that movie producers used social
media to enhance customer engagement, which was posi-
tively correlated with film performance.
Hadida (2009) and Hennig-Thurau et al. (2006) showed
that box office performance respoded differently to different
types of factors such as studio actions and movie quality in
the early weeks of a movie’s release, especially in the open-
ing week. Duan et al. (2008a) explored the dynamic patterns
of WOM valence (defined as the affective quality of a mes-
sage) and found that box office performance was associated
with volume rather than valence of social media. However,
Chintagunta et al. (2010) found that valence of WOM, rather
than volume, affected movie sales, which was contrary to
prior findings. They suggested that the contradiction might
be because their data samples were at the national level,
which neutralized the extreme effects of valence. Prior stud-
ies usually explored the significant factors that influenced
box office performance or weekly revenue in an aggregated
dataset (Chintagunta et al., 2010; Liu, 2006), in which the
analysis of low-frequency data was unable to reveal the
immediate or dynamic impact of social media on the box
office on a daily basis. Bogaert et al. (2021) highlights the
fact that there is limited effort to examine the dynamic nature
of social media and the box office, which is to be addressed
in the current study.
2.2 OSM and ESM
Stephen and Galak (2012) defined OSM as a company's own
marketing channel and ESM as being maintained by custom-
ers or journalists. Therefore, a social media message can
be classified into two categories based on the source of the
social media activity or who creates the social media mes-
sage. OSM includes social media activities that are gener-
ated by the brand owner (or its agents) and controlled by the
owner in social networking platforms (e.g., Facebook and
Twitter). ESM covers social media activities that are related
to a brand but are not directly generated by the brand owner
or its agents (Xie & Lee, 2015) but instead by consumers and
fans. Lovett and Staelin (2016) considered WOM and online
social media as examples of ESM and brand websites and
other proprietary platforms as instances of OSM.
There are consistent findings that OSM and ESM have
different impacts on consumer behaviors (e.g., Colicev et al.,
2018; Lovett & Staelin, 2016; Stephen & Galak, 2012; Xie
& Lee, 2015). Lovett and Staelin (2016) found that ESM
seemed to be more powerful than OSM in its impact on a
consumer’s exposure to a new TV show. Goh et al. (2013)
found that UGC was more likely to affect consumer pur-
chasing behavior than did MGC in a study of a brand com-
munity on Facebook. Xie and Lee (2015) found that both
OSM and ESM had significantly positive impacts on the
likelihood to purchase even though the effects were sup-
pressive on each other, and in the case of in-store promotion,
OSM and ESM had little effect on offline purchase. Among
studies that investigated online reviews, examples of ESM
by Gu et al. (2013) and Hennig-Thurau et al. (2015) showed
that sales of low-quality products were impaired by negative
reviews, while high-quality products did not benefit much
from positive online WOM. Colicev et al. (2018) found that
OSM and ESM had different impacts on brand awareness,
purchase intention, and customer satisfaction. Specifically,
OSM increased brand awareness and customer satisfaction
but not purchase intent. The volume of ESM affected brand
awareness and purchase intent but not customer satisfaction,
while valence had the largest effects on customer satisfaction
(Colicev et al., 2018).
2.3 Firm Size
The relationship between social media and box office per-
formance may vary between the characteristics of the firms
that market, distribute, and advertise movies, with firm size
particularly affecting the relationship (Ainslie et al., 2005;
Eliashberg et al., 2006). Prior studies have suggested that
independent movie producers, distributors, and marketers or
producer segments have significant impact on movie sales
because these firms have different market shares, advertis-
ing expenditures, and marketing competencies (e.g., Ainslie
et al., 2005; Eliashberg et al., 2006).
Large and experienced marketing firms perform better
than startup or small firms in terms of how they impact
movie sales (Ainslie et al., 2005; Chen et al., 2012; Hennig-
Thurau et al., 2006; Kumar et al., 2017; Legoux et al., 2016).
The reason is that large companies generally have more
resources and better reputations for pre-advertising and mar-
keting of movies. Some large firms also produce, finance,
and distribute their own movies (Eliashberg et al., 2006). On
the other hand, small movie production or independent film
companies may have to work together with large marketing
firms. However, we do not know much about how different-
sized marketers utilize social media and how the impact of
13

social media on movie sales varies among marketers of dif-
ferent sizes.
2.4 Platform Specificity
Because of the increasing proliferation and popularization
of new social media platforms, researchers have started to
investigate the role of different platforms in movie sales.
However, Bogaert et al. (2021) suggests that there is lim-
ited effort in investigating different platforms. In this study,
we compare the general platform with the specialized plat-
form. Examples of a general platform include Facebook and
Twitter, where people create and share information on much
broader topics. A specialized platform is positioned as a por-
tal for movies only, for example, IMDb and MSN Movies.
Prior studies have found that the Facebook “Like” func-
tion had a significant impact on box office performance
(Ding et al., 2017). However, Twitter reviews had a mixed
effect on a movie’s opening day revenue (Hennig-Thurau
et al., 2015), i.e., the effect of positive WOM was insignifi-
cant, while the negative WOM decreased revenue. Rui et al.
(2013) found that the impact of WOM from users with more
Twitter followers was significantly greater than that from
users with less Twitter followers.
3 Hypotheses Development
3.1 OSM, ESM and Movie Box Office
In terms of the impacts of OSM and ESM on movie sales,
Song et al. (2019) explored the relationship between social
media platforms and box office performance using a dataset
of 60 movies. The authors found that both UGC and MGC
added meaningful explanatory power to box office perfor-
mance. Gopinath et al. (2013) examined the impacts of MGC
(measured in terms of advertising) and UGC (measured in
terms of blogs) on movie sales before and after the release
of a movie. They found that advertising had a significant
impact on movie sales on both the release day and thereafter.
However, blogs affected release-day box office revenue only
by means of volume and post-release sales only by valance.
Feng et al. (2020) examined how media coverage (online
news and social media posts) and consumer engagement
(information search and reading) affected the sales of origi-
nal movies and sequels in the opening week. They found
that online news, social media posts, and informational
reading were positively related to future sales of originals
and sequels, while information search was not a significant
predictor of movie sales for originals. Media coverage had
a stronger and more durable marketing effect on the sales of
originals, and consumer engagement had a stronger effect
on the sales of sequels. In addition, social media seems to
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Information Systems Frontiers
have different impacts on movie sales during different stages
of a movie’s release. Luo et al. (2013) found that the dura-
tion of the time for social media to reach its peak impact
on movie sales was shorter than that of conventional media
because social media had better visibility and availability
on the internet.
These findings suggest that OSM and ESM have posi-
tive impacts on movie sales during different stages of a
movie’s show-time, especially during the opening week
(Ainslie et al., 2005). There exist some dynamics between
social media and box office performance when social media
and movie sales respond to one another in their complex
interactions.
H1: OSM and ESM have different impacts on box office
performance during the movie’s opening week.
3.2 Impact of Firm Size
Chen et al. (2012) hypothesized that the effect of a movie
review on the market value of the movie producer was
stronger when the firm spent more money on advertising.
However, the empirical results did not support the hypoth-
esis. Conversely, Chintagunta et al. (2010) found an inter-
action effect of online WOM and a firm’s expenditure on
advertising. In addition, Yang et al. (2012) found that WOM
valence had a significant relationship with movie sales only
in the case of non-mainstream movies that had smaller mar-
keting budgets relative to other mainstream movies. This
is a significant finding, which suggests that, if a movie’s
marketer is large and famous, ESM is not significant. It also
suggests that WOM on social media may not be effective
and may not impact large marketers so that they can rely
on OSM. At the same time, Yang et al. (2012) found that,
if a movie was released by a small firm, WOM was effec-
tive. Following these findings, we posit that similar findings
about the impacts of OSM and ESM on the box office may
also apply to large firms and small firms.
H2: The effect of OSM on box office performance is more
salient for large firms than that of ESM (a), while the
effect of ESM is more salient for small firms than that of
OSM (b).
3.3 Impact of Platform Specificity
Song et al. (2019) compared the effects of UGC on two dif-
ferent platforms in China, i.e., Weibo and Douban Movies.
Weibo is a general microblog platform, similar to Twitter.
Douban Movies is a specialized social media platform for
movies. The authors found that the UGC on Weibo was a
stronger predictor for box office revenue than the UGC on
Douban. In addition, the effect of MGC on movie sales was
Information Systems Frontiers

Table 1  Descriptive statistics

Variable Description Mean Std. Dev Min Max

Boxofficeit Daily gross revenue of movie i on day t provided by Maoyan.com 3239.87 5160.41 6.90 52240.70
DBvolumeit Number of reviews about movie i on day t provided by Douban.com 1954.53 12639.00 3.00 432370.00
DBvalenceit Average rating of movie i on day t provided by Douban.com 30.18 7.38 11.25 44.06
Weiboindexit Number of keywords about movie i on day t provided by Weibo.com 88374.26 132600.93 1012.00 1464344.00
Firmweiboit Number of posts about movie i on day t published by official accounts 10.99 10.71 0.00 94.00
of marketing firms on Weibo.com
Weekdayit Whether day t of movie i is Friday, Saturday, or Sunday 0.43 0.50 0.00 1.00
Directorindexit Director’s search index of movie i on day t provided by Baidu.com 2666.81 1342.57 301.00 4870.00

partially mediated by UGC. Bogaert et al. (2021) revealed
different effects of social media data from Facebook and
Twitter in predicting box office sales. They showed that
Twitter had less impact on box office sales than did Face-
book because Twitter users had less source credibility than
Facebook users.
These studies demonstrate that there are differences in
terms of the effects of OSM and ESM on movie sales across
different platforms. We expect that general platforms and
specialized platforms have different implications for the rela-
tionship between OSM and ESM and movie sales. Compared
with the general platform, the specialized platform may be
more effective in targeting movie goers so that the speed of
information sharing among consumers is faster. Therefore,
the response of the box office to social media on specialized
platforms may be faster. On the other hand, the effect on the
general platform may last longer once the general platform
reaches the critical mass of social media posts about movies.
H3: The effect of OSM and ESM on box office perfor-
mance (a) acts faster on specialized platforms than on
general platforms and (b) lasts longer on general plat-
forms than on specialized platforms.
4 Data
We chose both domestic and foreign movies released in the
Chinese market from 2016 to 2018. Consistent with prior
studies (e.g., Liu, 2006), we collected data daily during the
opening week of the movies from multiple sources. Daily
box office data were obtained from Maoyan.com, an online
ticketing platform in China. Movie reviews and ratings
that represented ESM and OSM were collected from two
other social media platforms, i.e., Douban.com and Weibo.
com. Both platforms were the most popular platforms in
China and, therefore, were representatives of a specialized
platform and a general platform. Douban.com is the most
famous movie platform in China that is specialized in track-
ing the movie industry. It included 91 million active users
and reported 100 million daily page views in 2018 by the
time of our data collection. Weibo.com is the most popular
microblog website in China, similar to Twitter in the US. It
included 462 million monthly active users in 2018, account-
ing for 42.3% of the total number of Chinese internet users.
The box office performance of movie i on day t, i.e., Box-
officeit, was measured as the daily gross revenue of movie
i on day t collected from Maoyan.com. To measure OSM,
denoted as Firmweiboit, we collected the total number of
daily microblog posts about movie i on day t published by
the official accounts of movie marketing firms on Weibo.
com. For ESM, we measured volume and valence, simi-
lar to the prior literature (Chintagunta et al., 2010; Duan
et al., 2008a; Liu, 2006). The volume of ESM was measured
using two metrics: DBvolumeit which was the total number
of reviews on movie i on day t posted by the specialized
movie platform Douban.com, and Weiboindexit which was
the total number of keywords or hashtags about movie i on
day t posted by the general microblog site Weibo.com. In
addition, the valence of ESM, denoted as DBvalenceit, was
measured as the average rating score of movie i on day t pro-
vided by Douban.com. The score ranged from the lowest 10
to the highest 50. After removing movies with missing data,
289 movies were included in our sample. We summarize the
measures of these movies in Table 1.
There were about 200 movie marketers and distributors at
the time of data collection in China. To measure firm size,
we used a firm’s total sale of movies marketed and distrib-
uted by the time of data collection to measure that firm’s
size. The data of movie sales were collected from Maoyan.
com. We found that the top 20 firms accounted for about
80% of the movie sales in the Chinese market. We classified
these 20 firms as large firms and the rest as small firms. Join-
ing the movie sample and the firm list by means of which
firm marketed which movie, we found that, among the total
number of 289 movies in the sample, 112 and 177 movies
were marketed by small firms and large firms respectively.
We included two control variables including the direc-
tor’s search index of movie i on day t (Directorindexit) and
whether day t of movie i was Friday, Saturday, or Sunday

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 Information Systems Frontiers

(Weekdayit). Time-invariant variables about movies, such as
star buzz, budget, MPAA rating, movie genre, and exhibition
screen, are often controlled in prior studies that employed
traditional analytical approaches such as regression
(e.gAinslie et al., 2005; Chen et al., 2012; Karniouchina,
2011). We did not consider time-invariant variables in our
data analyses due to our data, which covered the seven days
of opening week, and features of our methodology, which
does not estimate control variables.
5 Methodology
5.1 PVAR
We used PVAR as our data analytic approach. VAR is a dynamic
system model used to analyze relationships between variables.
The most remarkable difference between vector autoregression
and multiple regression is that all variables in a VAR equation
are endogenous without any restraints. The PVAR method com-
bines the VAR model with panel data, allows estimations for
multiple cross-sections of data, and considers unobserved indi-
vidual heterogeneity (Love & Zicchino, 2006).
There are three elements in the PVAR analysis, i.e., gen-
eralized method of moments (GMM) estimation, impulse-
response functions (IRFs), and forecast error variance
decompositions (FEVDs) (Holtz-Eakin et al., 1987). The
previous literature suggests that the estimates of GMM do
not convey much information and that researchers should
focus on IRFs and FEVDs, both of which explain how each
variable responds to a shock in another variable in the sys-
tem (Galariotis et al., 2016).
Compared with other data analytical methods used in the
prior literature that studied movie sales, PVAR has several
advantages (Galariotis et al., 2016; Love & Zicchino, 2006).
First, VAR is suitable for situations that have uncertain links
between factors and little theoretical guidance to support the
relationships among the factors. Second, PVAR deals with
the challenge of the endogeneity problem by including the
regression’s lagged variables, such as the movie box office,
from a previous time in the instrument without imposing
unnecessary restrictions. Third, IRFs capture delayed effects
of social media on box office performance and can separate
the response of box office performance to the shock in each
variable. Fourth, PVAR allows the inclusion of a movie’s
fixed effects that are not the focus of a study. Fifth, PVAR
can be used to research a short-time-series dataset due to
the high degree of freedom gained from the cross-section
dimension.
To measure the dynamic two-way effect between box
office performance and social media and the substitution
effects among social media variables, we specified the
PVAR model as follows:

⎡ Boxof f iceit ⎤ ⎡ 𝛼1i ⎤ ⎡ ij

𝛽1,1 ...
ij
𝛽1,5 ⎤⎡ Boxof f ice
⎢ ⎥⎢ i,t−j ⎤ ⎡ 𝜀i1t ⎤
⎢ DBvolume ⎥ ⎢ 𝛼 i ⎥ ij
𝛽2,1 ...
ij
𝛽2,5 ⎥ � � � � ⎢ 𝜀i ⎥
⎢ it ⎥ ⎢ i⎥2 � ⎢ ⎥⎢ DBvolumei,t−j ⎥ 𝛿
ij
𝛿
ij
⎢ 2t ⎥ (1)
p
⎢ ij ij ⎥⎢ DBvalencei,t−j ⎥ + Weekday it
⎢ DBvalence it ⎥ = ⎢ 3⎥
𝛼 + 𝛽3,1 ... 𝛽3,5 1,1 1,2 + ⎢ 𝜀i3t ⎥
j=1 ⎢ ⎥⎢ ij ij
𝛿2,1 𝛿2,2 Directorindexit
⎢ Weiboindexit ⎥ ⎢ 𝛼 i ⎥ ⎢
ij
𝛽4,1 ...
ij
𝛽4,5 ⎥⎢ Weiboindexi,t−j ⎥⎥ ⎢ 𝜀i ⎥
⎢ Firmweibo ⎥ ⎢ 𝛼4i ⎥ ⎢ ⎥⎣ Firmweiboi,t−j ⎦ ⎢ 𝜀4t
i ⎥
⎣ it ⎦ ⎣ 5⎦ ⎣
ij
𝛽5,1 ..
ij
𝛽5,5 ⎦ ⎣ 5t ⎦

where i represents the movie and t is day (t = 1, 2, …, 7);
p is the optimal lag length; 𝛼mi (m = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) represents
the individual heterogeneity of each movie; 𝛽mi and 𝛿mi are
coefficients; 𝜀imt are idiosyncratic errors.
As an advantage of a panel approach, PVAR allows for
the explicit inclusion of fixed effects in the model. It cap-
tures unobservable time-invariant factors (star buzz, budget,
and MPAA rating) at the movie level. These time-invariant
factors were usually presented in prior studies using an
aggregated dataset model. However, these fixed effects tend
to be correlated with lags of the dependent variable in a
PVAR model. Therefore, we used forward mean-differenc-
ing, also referred as Helmert transformations (Holtz-Eakin
et al., 1987), to remove the individual effect ( 𝛽i ). Because
this procedure eliminates only the forward mean for each
movie day, the transformation preserves the orthogonality
between transformed variables and lagged regressors. Based
on Schwartz’s Bayesian information criterion (SIC) and
Hannan-Quinn information criterion (HQIC), we used the
optimal lag of two. Model selection criteria are summarized
in Table 2.
5.2 Estimation Validity
Before building IRFs and FEVDs, we checked the post-
estimation overall stationarity condition of the estimated
PVAR through the eigen value stability test. To verify
whether all the eigenvalues were within the unit circle,
we performed eigenvalue stationarity tests on the whole
sample, large firms, and small firms, respectively. The
results are shown in Tables 3, 4, and 5, all of which

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Table 2  Model selection indicated that the estimated PVAR satisfied the station-
Lag AIC BIC HQIC arity assumption.
Further, before conducting the forecasting procedure, we
1 68.437 74.912 73.741 examined the significance of causality and reverse effects
2 67.875* 73.427* 70.376* between explanatory covariates and dependent covariates
3 70.863 76.469 72.560 through the Granger causality test. Test results are presented
4 72.564 79.028 77.121 in Tables 6, 7, and 8.
5 105.592 127.560 116.201

The * indicates the best lag under the lag-order selection criteria
5.3 FEVD and IRF

We used FEVDs to examine the contribution of each variable

in explaining the variance of box office performance in the
PVAR model over time. The FEVD estimation, similar to ­R2,

Table 3  Eigenvalue stationarity

test (whole sample) Eigenvalue
Variables Modulus
Real Imaginary
Boxoffice 0.717 0 0.717

DBvolume 0.665 0.058 0.667

DBvalence 0.665 -0.058 0.667

Firmweibo 0.252 0 0.252

Weiboindex 0.025 0 0.025

Table 4  Eigenvalue stationarity

test (large firms) Eigenvalue
Variables Modulus
Real Imaginary
Boxoffice 0.719 0 0.719

DBvolume 0.673 0.061 0.676

DBvalence 0.673 -0.061 0.676

Firmweibo 0.255 0 0.255

Weiboindex 0.193 0 0.193

Table 5  Eigenvalue stationarity

test (small firms) Eigenvalue
Variables Modulus
Real Imaginary
Boxoffice 0.901 0 0.901

DBvolume 0.667 0 0.667

DBvalence 0.495 0 0.495

Firmweibo 0.189 0 0.189

Weiboindex -0.112 0 0.112

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Table 6  PVAR-granger Ha:Excluded variable Granger-causes Equation variable

causality wald test (whole
sample) Ho:Excluded variable does not Granger-causes Equation variable
Response to Boxoffice DBvolume Dbvalence Firmweibo Weiboin-
dex

Boxoffice - 6.74** 8.41** 13.09** 5.94*

DBvolume 16.16*** - 4.14 8.31** 8.47**
Dbvalence 3.66 1.81 - 2.39 5.50*
Firmweibo 72.87*** 47.31*** 1.10 - 47.06***
Weiboindex 5.72** 1.92 3.79 2.79 -
***
p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1

demonstrates the relative importance of predicting variables. wear-out time of each response. Wear-in indicates how long the
Based on the FEVD results, we accessed how OSM and ESM response takes to reach its peak, while wear-out indicates the time
contributed to the box office. for the response to become insignificant after reaching the peak.
Then, we applied IRFs to examine how social media and box
office performance responded to one another. IRFs show the
response of one variable to a shock in another variable. Based on
the Cholesky decomposition, IRFs estimate the orthogonalized 6 Empirical Results
IRFs (OIRF). Basically, we looked at the net effect of a unit change
in social media i on movie j’s box office at time t and the response 6.1 Main Test
of the box office j to the box office lags. Considering the short term
of a movie’s lifecycle, we chose seven days as the impulse-response The results of PVAR are reported in Table 9, where the
duration. Drawing on OIRFs, we also reported the wear-in and movie box office is the dependent variable. We further

Table 7  PVAR-granger Ha:Excluded variable Granger-causes Equation variable

causality wald test (large firms)
Ho:Excluded variable does not Granger-causes Equation variable
Response to Boxoffice DBvolume Dbvalence Firmweibo Weiboin-
dex

Boxoffice - 2.35 3.03 5.49* 9.06**

DBvolume 25.91*** - 1.60 2.40 16.02***
Dbvalence 0.48 2.24* - 1.69 0.49
Firmweibo 26.43*** 11.09** 2.31 - 12.58**
Weiboindex 3.34 0.09 3.41 1.40 -
***
p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1

Table 8  PVAR-granger Ha:Excluded variable Granger-causes Equation variable

causality wald test (small firms)
Ho:Excluded variable does not Granger-causes Equation variable
Response to Boxoffice DBvolume Dbvalence Firmweibo Weiboin-
dex

Boxoffice - 2.90 5.33** 7.97** 0.70

DBvolume 6.07** - 60.38*** 7.08** 4.11
Dbvalence 4.10 10.14** - 3.16 1.47
Firmweibo 22.185* 16.73*** 1.89 - 27046***
Weiboindex 5.97** 6.25** 4.69* 4.62 -
***
p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1

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Table 9  PVAR estimation DV = Boxoffice Whole sample Large firms Small firms
results: main effects on movie
box office (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Boxofficet-1 0.330*** 0.328*** 0.489*** 0.482*** 0.211* 0.270**

-0.088 (0.087) (0.129) (0.128) (0.108) (0.116)
Boxofficet-2 -0.168*** -0.172*** -0.152*** -0.158*** -0.105 -0.142
(0.063) (0.062) (0.057) (0.056) (0.119) (0.107)
DBvolumet-1 0.305*** 0.335*** 0.281** 0.265** 0.159 0.331**
(0.085) (0.090) (0.116) (0.115) (0.101) (0.136)
DBvolumet-2 -0.152** -0.157** -0.287*** -0.273*** -0.075 0.004
(0.065) (0.065) (0.069) (0.070) (0.078) (0.093)
DBvalencet-1 0.844 0.823 1.486 1.420 0.560* 0.217
(0.648) (0.628) (0.935) (0.877) (0.302) (0.314)
DBvalencet-2 -0.384 -0.358 0.235 0.224 -0.391 -0.370
(0.268) (0.272) (0.388) (0.382) (0.256) (0.274)
Weiboindext-1 0.294* 0.317** 0.153 0.134 0.556** 0.592**
(0.160) (0.160) (0.172) (0.179) (0.238) (0.256)
Weiboindext-2 -0.165 -0.148 -0.130 -0.134 -0.189 -0.063
(0.108) (0.109) (0.088) (0.088) (0.265) (0.212)
Firmweibot-1 0.401*** 0.443*** 0.278*** 0.269*** 0.465*** 0.620***
(0.067) (0.077) (0.082) (0.092) (0.087) (0.123)
Firmweibot-2 0.379*** 0.401*** 0.291*** 0.287*** 0.390*** 0.524***
(0.044) (0.048) (0.053) (0.055) (0.064) (0.084)
Control variables - included - included - included
***
p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1

Table 10  FEVD results: variance decomposition of movie box office of the second lag had no impact. These findings suggest
Media Movie box office
that the three examples of ESM had different impacts on
box office performance. On the other hand, with Firm-
Whole sample Large firm Small firm weibo as an example of OSM, the coefficients of both lags
ESM DBvolume 0.023 0.031 0.049 were significantly positive. Taking these all together, we
DBvalence 0.015 0.002 0.020 found that OSM and ESM had different impacts on box
Weiboindex 0.037 0.012 0.113 office performance, providing initial support for H1.
OSM Firmweibo 0.061 0.084 0.039 In addition, Table 10 shows that both ESM (DBvol-
Total of ESM 0.065 0.045 0.182 ume, DBvalence, and Weiboindex) and OSM (Firmweibo)
Total of both ESM and 0.136 0.129 0.221 explained 0.065 and 0.061 of the variance in the box office
OSM of the whole sample, respectively. When looking at each
specific measure of social media, the variance in the box
office explained by Firmweibo was much higher than that
used FEVD to assess the relative predictive power of each of DBvolume, DBvalence, and Weiboindex, respectively.
endogenous variable in explaining the box office. The results This provided additional support for H1.
are shown in Table 10. We also plotted diagrams of IRFs Figure 1 shows that the response of Boxoffice to OSM
(Figs. 1, 2, and 3) to provide additional evidence. and ESM with the whole sample. In Fig. 1(a), the response
Table 9 shows that, after controlling exogenous vari- of Boxoffice to DBvolume was significantly positive for
ables, the coefficients of DBvolume had mixed signs in the about 2.5 days. Figure 1(b) showed the effect of DBva-
whole sample. The coefficient of the first lag was signifi- lence was not significant. In Fig. 1(c), the reaction of Box-
cantly positive and that of the second lag was negative. In office to Weiboindex was significantly positive for about
addition, DBvalence was consistently insignificant, indi- 1.5 days. In Fig. 1(d), OSM (Firmweibo) was significantly
cating that valence had no impact on box office perfor- positive for about 4.5 days, reaching the peak on the sec-
mance. More interestingly, Weiboindex of the first lag had ond day to show a two-day wear-in. Then, it attenuated and
a significant positive effect in the whole sample, while that showed a slow wear-out, becoming insignificant in day 4.5.

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Fig. 1  IRF: response of Boxoffice with the whole sample
In summary, the reaction of the box office to ESM peaked
and attenuated more quickly than it did to OSM. These
IRFs provide additional support that OSM and ESM had
different impacts on box office performance.
6.2 Heterogeneity Test on Firm Size
Regarding heterogeneity test on firm size, it is noteworthy
that both ESM and OSM together had a stronger impact on
the box office of movies marketed by small firms (0.221)
than that by large firms (0.129) (Table 10). Considering
each individual measure of social media, the coefficients
of DBvolume had mixed signs in the sample of large firms
(column (4) in Table 9), similar to the whole sample. In
addition, DBvalence and Weiboindex had no impacts for
large firms, but the impacts of Firmweibo of both lags were
significantly positive for large firms. Taking these together,
OSM had a much higher impact on the box office than
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Information Systems Frontiers
did ESM for large firms. Therefore, H2a was supported.
Table 10 also provides another evidence that the impact
of OSM (0.084) almost doubled that of ESM (0.045), sug-
gesting that OSM played a dominant role and that H2a was
supported.
Figures 2 depicts IRFs for large firms. Figures 2(a) and
(b) show that the response of Boxoffice to DBvolume was
significantly positive in about 1.5 days, while the effect of
DBvalence was not significant. The reaction of Boxoffice to
DBvolume reached the peak on the first day, showing a one-
day wear-in and less than two-day wear-out. In Fig. 2(c), the
reaction of Boxoffice to a shock in Weiboindex was signifi-
cantly positive in one day, showing a quick one-day wear-in
and then becoming insignificant. Figure 2(d) shows a posi-
tive shock of Firmweibo to Boxoffice. The significant period
was about four days, showing a slow two-day wear-in and
two-day wear-out. Overall, the reaction of box office perfor-
mance to OSM in the sample of large firms was relatively
Information Systems Frontiers
Fig. 2  IRF: response of Boxoffice with large firms
stronger and showed a slower wear-in and longer wear-out
than that to ESM. In terms of the amplitude and the signifi-
cant period of the response of box office performance to a
shock in social media, OSM (Firmweibo) was more impor-
tant for large firms than was ESM. These plots also provided
support for H2a.
When it comes to small firms, the coefficients of
DBvolume and Weiboindex of the first lag was positive
with control variables included. In addition, the coef-
ficients of Firmweibo of both lags were also signifi-
cantly positive for small firms. Taking the coefficients
of DBvolume and Weiboindex together and comparing
it with that of Firmweibo, ESM seemed to have a more
salient impact on box office performance than did OSM,
supporting H2b. In addition, Table 10 also suggests that
the impact of ESM (0.182) was much bigger than that
of OSM (0.039) for small firms, suggesting that ESM
played a dominant role and that H2b was supported.
In addition, Figs. 3 depicts IRFs for small firms. Fig-
ure 3(a) shows that the response of Boxoffice to DBvolume
reached the peak in the first day, and the significant period
was about three days. The reaction of Boxoffice to a shock in
DBvalence was significantly positive in one day (Fig. 3(b)).
Figure 3(c) shows a significantly positive shock of Weiboin-
dex to Boxoffice, which lasted about four days, reaching the
peak on the second day and showing a two-day wear-in and
two-day wear-out. In Fig. 3(d), the reaction of Boxoffice to
Weiboindex was significantly positive in one day only. Over-
all, the amplitude and the significant period of the response
of box office performance to ESM were stronger and longer
than were those of OSM for the sample of small firms. These
findings also provided support for H2b.
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Fig. 3  IRF: response of Boxoffice with small firms
6.3 Heterogeneity Test on Platform Specificity
Regarding the heterogeneity test on platform specificity, we
summarize the findings in Table 11. In terms of wear-in time
and wear-out time, we found that social media on the specialized
platform did not always have a faster wear-in time than it did on
the general platform. For example, for the whole sample and
large firms, the wear-in time of DBvolume was one day for both,
which was shorter than that of Firmweibo but the same as that of
Weiboindex. This suggests that the box office responded faster
to DBvolume than to Firmweibo but the response to DBvolume,
an ESM on the specialized platform, was about the same as
the response to Weiboindex, an ESM on the general platform.
Moreover, for the whole sample and large firms, the wear-out
time of Firmweibo on the general platform was longer than that
of DBvolume on the specialized platform, which was margin-
ally longer than that of Weiboindex on the general platform. On
the other hand, opposite findings were found for small firms.
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Overall, these findings did not provide consistent support for
H3a and H3b.
6.4 Impact of Box Office Performance on Social
Media
The PVAR method also allowed us to examine how box
office performance impacted social media. In this section
and the next, we only report significant responses, omit-
ting those that were insignificant. As shown in Fig. 4, we
found that the box office had a positive effect on ESM on
the specialized platform (DBvolume), reaching the peak on
the first day and lasting for three days. In addition, the effect
only existed for large firms, reaching the peak on the second
day and lasting for 5.5 days. In addition, Fig. 5 shows that
Boxoffice also had a positive impact on Weiboindex for large
firms, lasting three days. These findings indicated that mov-
ies marketed by large firms were able to impact ESM, but not
Information Systems Frontiers

Table 11  Wear-in and wear-out Media Whole sample Large firms Small firms
time of different platforms (unit:
day) Wear-in Wear-out Wear-in Wear-out Wear-in Wear-out

Specialized platform DBvolume 1 1.5 1 0.5 1 2

DBvalence - - - - 1 -
General platform Weiboindex 1 0.5 1 0.5 2 2
Firmweibo 2 2.5 2 2 1 -

Fig. 4  IRF of DBvolume to Boxoffice: whole sample (left) and large firms (right)

OSM, and lead users to generate a greater number of UGCs
on both the general and specialized platforms.
6.5 Interaction Effect between ESM and OSM
We also examined the mutual reactions between ESM and
OSM. First, we found significant interactions between
Fig. 5  IRF of Weiboindex to Boxoffice (large firms)
DBvolume and Weiboindex for the whole sample and
small firms. As shown in Fig. 6, the positive effect of
DBvolume on Weiboindex lasted three days for the whole
sample and two days for small firms. This suggests that,
in the early days of a movie release, the general platform
was more sensitive to online activities on the specialized
platform. It also suggests that the specialized platform
was rarely affected by the general platform (the figure
is not shown here because the effect was insignificant).
Movie reviews, comments, and critiques posted on the
specialized platform were able to act as the authorita-
tive sources for the general platform and facilitate user
discussions on the general platform that would enhance
the public attention to the movie. However, the content
on the general platform failed to act as the source for the
content on the specialized platform. This may be because
the discussions on the specialized forum might be con-
sidered more professional, authoritative, and valuable.
Finally, we found that DBvolume had a positive impact
on Firmweibo for large firms (Fig. 7). Firmweibo quickly
reacted to the volume of ESM on the specialized platform
(DBvolume), and such a reaction only existed for a short
time. However, this reaction only applied to large firms.
This finding confirms the fact that large firms would
pay attention to ESM on the specialized platform, which

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Fig. 6  IRFs of Weiboindex to DBvolume: whole sample (left) and small firms (right)
might be owned or managed by professionals such as
movie critics, and then react to this ESM.
7 Discussion and Conclusion
This study has examined the dynamic relationship between
social media (ESM and OSM) and movie box office on a
daily basis in the opening week of the movie. We have fur-
ther investigated how the relationship varied with firm size
and platform specificity.
First, OSM and ESM had different impacts on box office
performance. Table 9 shows the short-term (two days)
dynamics among Boxoffice, DBvolume, DBvalence, Wei-
boindex, and Firmweibo. IRFs demonstrate the long-term
(more than two days) response of one of the PVAR endog-
enous variables to the one-unit shock in the other variable
Fig. 7  IRF of Firmweibo to DBvolume (large firms)
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Information Systems Frontiers
(Stock & Watson, 2001). In the short term, both OSM (Firm-
weibo) and ESM (DBvolume and Weiboindex) showed sig-
nificant impacts on subsequent box office performance. The
difference between OSM and ESM was more pronounced
in the long term. Specifically, the reaction of the box office
to ESM peaked and attenuated faster than the reaction to
OSM, respectively. This might be because OSM is more
focused and consistent in providing positive information
about movies. Although ESM can amplify the new audience
at a quicker speed, it includes both positive and negative
reviews. Thus, the positive effect of ESM on the box office
disappeared quickly.
In Table 9, we found a mixed effect of DBvolume on
short-term movie sales. The negative effect of volume on
sales was also reported by Wang et al. (2021), which found
that the volume of UGC from both Facebook and Twitter
had a significant negative effect on offline product sales.
In our study, the spreading capability of Douban, the spe-
cialized platform, likely brought some side effects to box
office performance. A potential reason for this result might
be that reviews on a specialized platform were detailed and
professional. Customers might place more weight on nega-
tive reviews that thereby brought a negative effect on box
office performance. Another explanation is that Weibo’s
content has a 140-character limit while Douban has both
short reviews (140-character limit) and long reviews (with-
out word limit). Those long reviews usually disclose too
much about the movie’s plot which might lead to a decrease
in movie box office (Li et al., 2022).
In addition, the effect of movie box office on subsequent
sales also had mixed signs. Previous studies have attributed
the rapid decline in movie sales to the depletion of potential
audiences from a fixed pool (Sawhney & Eliashberg, 1996).
A negative correlation between movie box office and its lags
was also reported in other studies. For example, Krider and
Information Systems Frontiers
Weinberg (1998) demonstrated that the decline of a movie’s
revenues after opening was a common phenomenon. Mean-
while, a large number of moviegoers may increase the risk
of movie piracy and lead to lost sales (Peukert et al., 2017).
Thus, the higher the early movie sales, the lower the subse-
quent movie attendance.
Second, taking firm size into consideration, we found
that OSM had a stronger explanatory power for box office
performance in the sample of large firms, while ESM had a
stronger effect on the box office for small firms. This sug-
gests that large firms should depend on their OSM, their
experiences, and financial capabilities in distributing and
advertising movies. They have the capacity to build strong
social networks and influence the movie market through ini-
tiatives such as publishing star interviews o offering lotter-
ies to enhance a movie’s popularity and increase its appeal
among customers. On the other hand, the dominant role of
Weiboindex, an example of ESM, among all the social media
for small firms may be explained in two ways. First, small
companies do not own well-known online or offline brands
so that their official accounts on OSM may receive far fewer
subscribers. Second, their presence on specialized platforms
may be affected by large firms that dominate the competi-
tion on specialized platforms. Therefore, small firms need to
depend on ESM to draw the attention of social media users.
We further explore the different roles of OSM and ESM
on general and specialized platforms. Results suggest that
the ESM (DBvolume) on the specialized platform seemed
to have a faster impact on the box office than did the OSM
(Firmweibo) on the general platform, which had a longer
impact. ESM on the specialized platform is most likely
contributed by enthusiastic movie fans, commentators, and
critics who have already seen the movies. They can provide
more detailed and convincing reviews than OSM. Therefore,
the speed of customer conversion is faster on the special-
ized platform. However, the reaction of the box office to
the ESM (DBvolume) on the specialized platform was not
always faster than its reaction to the ESM (Weiboindex) on
the general platform before reaching the peak. In addition,
the reaction to ESM (Weiboindex) on the general platform
did not always seem to last longer than it did on the special-
ized platform before becoming insignificant. It shows a close
predictive power between Douban and Weibo.
Finally, in the reverse relationship between social media
and the box office, the response of ESM to a shock in the box
office was contingent upon firm size while that of OSM was
insignificant. That is, the response of ESM was significant
for large firms but not small firms, and the significant period
was longer on the specialized platform than on the general
platform. Our findings are consistent with studies of product
diffusion, i.e., the more people consumed movies, the more
consumers spread word-of-mouth (Mahajan et al., 2000).
This effect is more obvious for the specialized platform
because it is focused on movies only. The general platform
integrates multiple topics and social networks. The buzz of
a movie can be quickly replaced by other topics. Thus, con-
sumers who have consumed a movie have a stronger incen-
tive to spread ESM on specialized platforms.
7.1 Research Implications
Our findings bring important extensions to the previous
research on the relationship between social media and movie
sales. First, most previous research focused on a single social
media channel and explored how ESM volume and valence
affected movie box office (Bogaert et al., 2021; Hennig-Thurau
et al., 2015). This study considers both OSM and ESM and
provides a balanced view of two types of social media. We
found that ESM and OSM had different impacts on box office
performance. The positive effect of OSM lasted longer than
ESM while ESM had a faster effect. Different from previous
findings, our results suggested that OSM had advantages over
ESM in predicting movie sales (Duan et al., 2008a; Srinivasan
et al., 2016). Second, unlike previous studies that were focused
mainly on how social media affected movie sales (Chintagunta
et al., 2010; Luo et al., 2013), this study revealed how social
media responded to the box office. Similar to Duan et al.
(2008b) which demonstrated that previous day's box office
increased the world-of-mouth volume, our findings supported
their initial evidence and further assessed the dynamics
between these endogenous variables. We also found that the
impact of the box office on social media varied with firm size
and platform specificity. Moreover, we are one of the first to
explore the interactions between ESM and OSM.
This study also provides fresh insights for the multichannel
marketing of movies. Previous studies emphasized the power of
social media or firm size for movie marketing separately (Chen
et al., 2012; Gopinath et al., 2013), little is known about how the
effect of different social media channels varies with firm size.
This study fulfills this research gap by highlighting the heteroge-
neity of firm size. We found that for marketing firms of different
sizes, OSM and ESM had different effects on the box office
of movies. These findings extended prior studies on how firms
could allocate their long-term multichannel marketing strategies
(Wang et al., 2021).
In addition, this study contributes to the literature on
business value of different social media. By analyzing
heterogeneity of platforms, we can better understand the
business value of social media specialization. Song et al.,
(2019) indicated that UGC on the general platform (Weibo)
was more influential than that on the specialized platform
(Douban). However, we found that box office performance
reacted more quickly to social media on the specialized
platform than to those on the general platform. Therefore,
we underscore the essential role of specialized platforms in
rapid customer conversion.
13

Methodologically, this study applied PVAR and showed
its effectiveness in predicting movie sales. More importantly,
PVAR allows us to examine the bidirectional relationship
between social media and box office performance in a dynamic
manner. This cannot be easily accomplished by traditional
analytical approaches. Moreover, we further analyzed when
the effect became significant or insignificant and how long the
effects lasted (Galariotis et al., 2016). Future studies can apply
PVAR to their panel data to examine the nature of the relation-
ships under investigation.
7.2 Managerial Implications
This study also provides implications for managers of movie
marketers and distributors in several ways. First, managers
should have the general knowledge that regardless of the
size of the firm that markets the movie, ESM and OSM had
about the same level of impact on the movie box office. How-
ever, managers should be aware that the response of the box
office to ESM was quicker than it was to OSM. Therefore,
managers need to pay attention to ESM in the earlier stage
and continue enhance the OSM. Second, managers of small
marketing firms should develop their capabilities of utilizing
ESM. Small firms do not have sufficient financial resources
to organize offline marketing, exhibition, and advertising.
They may also lack the resources to develop their own online
media. Therefore, they need to strive to develop strategies of
how to leverage the capabilities of ESM such as using WOM
marketing strategies. They may collaborate with active social
media users, experts, and movie critics who are able to create
more relevant content about movies. Third, large firms should
allocate their resources to develop and enhance their OSM in
different social media channels rather than doing something
similar to what small firms do in promoting ESM. Fourth,
managers of movie marketing firms need to recognize that
they can acquire different business values from the general
and specialized platforms. Our study showed different speeds
of customer conversion on different platforms. The conver-
sion time in general social media was longer than that in spe-
cialized social media. However, the effect of social media on
the box office on the specialized platform lasted longer than
it did on the general platform. Therefore, firms should design
different social media strategies across different channels and
platforms. Fifth, based on the complicated impulse-response
relationship between OSM and ESM, a firm should arrange
a reasonable configuration of their resources between OSM
and ESM to achieve the desired performance.
7.3 Limitations and Future Research
Several limitations in the current study are noteworthy. First,
our data were collected from the Chinese movie market.
13
Information Systems Frontiers
There might exist specific features and characteristics with
this market that might affect the generalization of the find-
ings to other markets. Future studies can collect data from
other movie markets or compare different ones. Second,
our selection of measures for the research constructs was
limited by data collection. Therefore, the results of using
these measures in data analyses might be different from stud-
ies that adopt other measures. Future studies can try to use
other indicators to measure ESM and OSM to cross-validate
the findings. Third, our data were limited to seven days in
the opening week of the movie. Therefore, we were unable
to report findings beyond the seven-day window and were
unable to observe the extended effects of OSM and ESM on
the movie box office. Future research can expand the time
period of the movie and increase sample size. Finally, unob-
served time-varying features may influence the reliability of
the results. Future researchers may consider a multi-method
approach to complement secondary data with quasi-exper-
imental designs.
Funding The research was supported by the National Natural Sci-
ence Foundation of China (grant numbers: 72231004 and 71871155)
and Shandong Industrial Internet Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Community.
Data Availability Data are available on request from authors.
Declarations
Declaration of Interests The authors of this paper declare that they
do not have any known competing financial or non-financial interests
or personal relationships involved in the study reported in this paper.
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13

Nan Feng is a professor of information management at College of
Management and Economics, Tianjin University. He received his Ph.D.
degree in management science and engineering from Tianjin Univer-
sity. His research interests include electronic commerce and risk man-
agement. His work has appeared in MIS Quarterly, Decision Support
Systems, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Information &
Management, Enterprise Information Systems, Information Sciences,
and elsewhere.
Yannan Shi is a doctoral student at College of Management and Eco-
nomics, Tianjin University. Her research interests include social media
analytics and electronic commerce.
Yadi Li is a master student at College of Management and Economics,
Tianjin University. Her research interests include social media analytics
and electronic commerce.
Dahui Li is a professor of MIS at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
He received his Ph.D. in MIS from Texas Tech University. His current
research focuses on business-to-consumer relationships, online com-
munities, and technology innovation. He has had papers published in
Decision Sciences, Decision Support Systems, Information & Manage-
ment, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Journal of
Product Innovation Management, and elsewhere.
13
Information Systems Frontiers
Jie Jennifer Zhang is a professor of Information Systems and Fellow of
the Eunice & James L. West Distinguished Professorship in the College
of Business at the University of Texas at Arlington. She received her
Ph.D. in computer information systems from the University of Roches-
ter. She employs analytical and empirical techniques to closely examine
issues in advanced and business applications of information technologies,
for example, trend and business impacts of social media, web advertising,
consumer online behaviors, online channel selection and pricing strate-
gies, software licensing policies, and business alliances. Her research
appears in MIS Quarterly, Journal of Economics and Management Strate-
gies, Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information
Systems, Decision Support Systems, among others.
Minqiang Li is a professor at College of Management and Economics,
Tianjin University. He received the Ph.D. degree in systems engineering
and management science from Tianjin University. His major research
interests include management science and decision support, IT strategy,
electronic commerce, evolutionary computation, data mining, and intel-
ligent systems. He has published papers in academic journals and confer-
ences, such as MIS Quarterly, International Journal of Electronic Com-
merce, Information & Management, European Journal of Operational
Research, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Information Sciences,
and Pattern Recognition. He is a member of Operations Research Society
of China, and a member of the Association for Information Systems.