The Impact of Movie Reviews on Box Office: Media Portfolios and the Intermediation of Genre

Abstract

For experience goods, such as motion pictures, consumers rely on third-party endorsements as quality signals. Often, other media are used to disseminate such endorsements. As a result, their impact on a consumer is likely to depend on the consumer's type and frequency of media choices—that is, his or her media portfolio. This article argues that viewers who prefer literary genre motion pictures have distinct media portfolios that make them more responsive to professional reviews. The article demonstrates this effect through an analysis of the impact of professional reviews on box office receipts for the 750 leading titles released in the United States between 2004 and 2008.

Notes

¹By media vehicle we mean the specific airing of an episode of a television program or the specific issue of a newspaper or magazine.

²The line between media formats is not necessarily sharp. Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper, at the time, the hosts of “At the Movies”—the most popular movie review program during the study period—were, first and foremost, print journalists who published and, as of this time, continue to publish syndicated movie reviews in newspapers.

³Because of this asymmetry, and our focus on wide-release titles, we did not investigate the impact of awards on revenues.