Social Behavior and Personality, Volume 47, Issue 10, e8162

https://doi.org/10.2224/sbp.8162
www.sbp-journal.com

Box office performance: Influence of online word-of-mouth on

consumers’ motivations to watch movies
Kuo-Ting Yu1, Hsi-Peng Lu2, Chih-Yu Chin3, Yu-Shiuan Jhou2
1
Graduate Institute of Management, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan
2
Department of Information Management, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan
3
Department of Information Management, Chung Yuan Christian University, Taiwan

How to cite: Yu, K., Lu, H., Chin, C., & Jhou, Y. (2019). Box office performance: Influence of online word-of-mouth on consumers’
motivations to watch movies. Social Behavior and Personality: An international journal, 47(10), e8162

Keywords
Content created by the movie industry is high-risk, as production costs movies; online word-of-
and marketing budgets are massive but box office results can be mouth; media
volatile. We examined the effect of online word-of-mouth on consumption; social
consumers’ motivation and intention to watch movies. The proposed media; intrinsic
model was tested in a survey with 337 consumers using a structural motivation; perceived
equation modeling approach. The results showed that movie reviews by enjoyment
professional movie media writers had a substantial positive impact on
consumers’ intrinsic motivation for presenting themselves, via
transmitting their values and expressing personal favor by watching
movies. Popular media also had a positive influence on the intrinsic
motivation of perceived enjoyment, and social media had the broadest
influence on consumers’ intrinsic motivation. Thus, movie makers and
marketers should focus on the critical platform of online word-of-
mouth to enhance consumers’ motivation to watch movies.

Nowadays, movie box office results are affected by cable television and streaming videos. However, the
movie market has shown continual growth according to the 2017 Report of the Motion Picture Association
of America, in which the global box office revenue for that year was US$40.6 billion, up 5% from the
previous year. Although the U.S. market set a record for the fewest moviegoers in 22 years, the movie
markets in China, South America, and Russia each grew by over 20%, indicating a shifting box office
landscape. Tickets sold online grew from US$0.36 billion in 2006 to US$6.78 billion in 2015. The
population for watching movies in a cinema has also changed. More young people and diverse ethnic
populations went to the movies in 2017. Audiences between the ages of 12 and 17 years attended an average
of 4.9 movies over the year—more than any other age group—and were closely followed by 18-to-24 year
olds. This demonstrates that consumers who go to the cinema to watch movies are mainly concentrated in
young age groups. Hollywood had the largest production output in the movie industry in 2017, producing
777 new movies, a 22% increase from 10 years before. However, the 25 most popular movies (i.e., 3.2% of all
movies) accounted for 54% of total box office revenue (Motion Picture Association of America, 2018). Thus,
despite the large scale of the market, high production and marketing costs may not be recovered by the box
office revenue as planned, because box office results can be unpredictable (Basuroy, Desai, & Talukdar,
2006; Gopinath, Chintagunta, & Venkataraman, 2013). This leads to the conclusion that understanding the
influence of online word-of-mouth on consumers’ receptiveness is crucial to the box office revenue of the
movie industry.

CORRESPONDENCE Chih-Yu Chin, Department of Information Management, Chung Yuan Christian University, No. 200, Chung Pei
Road, Chung Li District, Taoyuan City 32023, Taiwan. Email: king@cycu.edu.tw

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