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The relationship between reviewer judgments and motion picture success: re-analysis and extension

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There is no general consensus on the market power of film critics.

—King (2007, p. 171)

Abstract

The relationship between the judgments of professional reviewers and the economic success of cultural products, such as motion pictures, has been the topic of controversial debates involving both scholars and industry experts. This study builds on previous research that distinguishes an “influencer effect” of reviews from a “predictor effect.” By empirically separating consumers’ and reviewers’ perceptions of movie quality through an auxiliary regression approach (and thus effectively controls for consumers’ quality perceptions), this study advances the discussion by investigating whether and how isolated reviewer quality perceptions are associated with box office results. The authors empirically test a non-linear effect of reviewers’ quality perceptions on box office returns, including a comprehensive investigation of the moderating forces of this relationship, using regression and simple slope analyses. Data from all 1,370 narrative films released in the United States between 1998 and 2006 reveal that though the short-term box office generally is not influenced by isolated reviewer quality perceptions, a non-linear relationship exists between reviews and long-term box office returns, such that films rated highly by reviewers are more strongly influenced than those that are not. In terms of moderators, the authors find evidence for several arthouse and mainstream characteristics to moderate the relationship between isolated reviewer quality perceptions and box office results.

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Notes

  1. To test this argument, we collected data for 22 leading US newspapers and magazines from the metacritic.com website for the sample of films used in the empirical part of this study and correlated them with Roger Ebert’s judgments. All correlations were significant at p < .001 and substantial, ranging from .37 to .55.

  2. We did not include the production budget as a moderator or control, because this variable would have added a high level of multicollinearity to the analysis.

  3. The latter condition is applied by Variety magazine to compile its annual list of movie releases, which served to identify the relevant titles.

  4. From A+ to D−, each letter has three grading levels (e.g., A+, A, A−). There are no E grades, and F represents the worst grade, with no sublevels. Overall, 13 different grades are thus possible.

  5. This argument is supported empirically by correlations among the different quality variables in our data set. Although IMDb correlates highly with reviewer judgments (measured by Metascore) at r = .76, both Yahoo! and Netflix show clearly lower correlations (r = .41 for Yahoo!; r = .44 for Netflix). The interitem correlation between Yahoo! and Netflix is quite high, with r = .72.

  6. We analyzed the number of released movies in our data but did not find any significant differences or trends across years, months, and weeks, so we did not control for the number of movies released in a given week.

  7. Both these statements came from an actual review of the movie High Fidelity in the Guardian (French 2000).

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Acknowledgments

Parts of this research were conducted when the first author was a professor at Bauhaus-University of Weimar. We acknowledge the multifarious support for our work we have received from the Bauhaus media school’s faculty in general and Armin Rott, Matthias Maier, and Ursula Schmitt in particular.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Marketing Center Muenster, University of Muenster, 48143, Muenster, Germany

    Thorsten Hennig-Thurau, André Marchand & Barbara Hiller

  2. Faculty of Management, Cass Business School, City University London, London, EC1Y 8TZ, UK

    Thorsten Hennig-Thurau

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  1. Thorsten Hennig-Thurau
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Correspondence to Thorsten Hennig-Thurau.

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Hennig-Thurau, T., Marchand, A. & Hiller, B. The relationship between reviewer judgments and motion picture success: re-analysis and extension. J Cult Econ 36, 249–283 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10824-012-9172-8

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