The Impact Of Online User Reviews On The Box Office Of Opening Week

In recent years,China's film industry has developed rapidly.In 2016,the total domestic box office revenue reached 45.7 billion yuan.In the movie industry,the box office in the first week has an important predictive effect on the cumulative box office of a movie.In the first week,the box office is often affected by factors such as online word of mouth.However,despite the fact that more and more scholars have focused on the factors that influence movie box office research in the past,most of the current studies use the cumulative box office as the dependent variable.Few scholars explore the factors that influence the box office in the first week.In addition,scholars have some disagreement about the effect of the valence of online word-of-mouth on movie box office.Some scholars have proved that the valence of online word-of-mouth has a significant positive impact on the box office,while other scholars believe that there is no influence on the box office.In explaining the impact of online word-of-mouth on the box office,most of the existing related research has focused on the direct impact of the online word-of-mouth on the box office.What needs to be pointed out is that,from the perspective of online word-of-mouth and other factors affecting the movie box office,it essentially acts as an external cue to reduce the uncertainty of consumer decision-making behavior and indirectly affects the movie box office;and,in addition to this type of external cues,there are internal cues with high predictive value such as directors,actors,and movie quality that provide a reference for consumers to reduce information asymmetry.However,because internal cues are often difficult to observe,measure,and evaluate,there is less related quantitative research.Therefore,this study takes the domestic film market as the research object and tries to make up for the above vacancies and deficiencies in related research.Specifically,this study uses the first week's box office of the domestic movie market as a dependent variable.From the perspective of consumer's cue utilization theory,firstly,this study explores the impacts of effectiveness of online word of mouth,controversial ratings,and comments on emotional controversy on the first week of the movie.And then the study introduces internal cues such as the influence of directors and actors,film quality and other factors,to explore the regulation effect of internal cues on the use of external cues by consumers.This study uses the information of 624 movies released in mainland China from 2013 to 2017 as research samples,and quantitatively validates and analyzes the assumptions made in this study by constructing multiple linear regression models.Research indicates that:The online word-of-mouth valence,rating controversy,and commentary emotional controversy have a significant positive impact on the movie box office in the first week.The higher the word-of-mouth valence of a movie,the higher the corresponding movie box-office in the first week;the more controversial the movie is,the higher the corresponding movie box office in the first week.In addition,the results of the research on the internal cue regulation mechanism showed that when the movie has more high-impact actors involved,the positive relationships between electronic word-of-mouth valence,rating controversy,commentary emotional controversy and the movie box office in the first week was strengthened;when the movie is at a high-quality level,higher valence of word-of-mouth and higher controversial movies are more attractive to consumers and stimulate their desire to watch,bringing higher movie box office in the short term.