FILMONOMICS

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Consumers frequently use movie reviews to determine whether a movie is worth the admission price. However, how much of an impact do they have on the way consumers think? The purpose of this study is to find out, "Can online word-of-mouth, such as professional reviews written by critics and comments written by consumers, and descriptive reviews written by consumers affect an individual consumer's decision to purchase a movie ticket positively or negatively?" This was confirmed by conducting secondary research in the form of a literature review, which served as a basis for conducting primary research in the form of a survey and analysis.

Following the results of the secondary research, it was decided to make the following changes to the research question, can changes in the wellspring of the survey, shopper or pundit, and in the data that the audit gives, positive, negative, or blended responses, influence the customer's choice to buy a film ticket. The findings indicated that changes in the information and source of film reviews do influence consumer thought processes, though this effect varies depending on the information and source of the review.

Positive reviews have the greatest impact on customers who have a high need for cognitive closure, and who prefer reviews written by other customers over those written by critics. It was found that people with low Self-Monitoring tend to appreciate reviews more than those with high Self-Monitoring, even though the Self-Monitoring individual difference measure was less effective at revealing as many significant results. This was a startling and unexplainable outcome, what’s more, can be utilized as a reason for additional exploration?

The way consumer information is gathered and the marketing and communication strategies of businesses have been affected by the Internet's popularity. Online user reviews (URs) and critical reviews (CRs) are two examples of eWOM (electronic word-of-mouth) information that today's customers can easily access and utilize. According to a Podium (2017) survey, 93% of customers agreed that online reviews influence their purchasing decisions. As a result, businesses attempt to promote their products through online reviews and even collect data on consumer preferences for product development and improvement.

CRs and URs are now a new component of the marketing communications mix that can have a significant impact on sales due to the growing popularity of the Web and social media. There has been a lot of discussion about two common eWOM measures: valence and volume. The number of reviews left by users or film critics is referred to as volume. A greater number of URs can better draw users' attention to the product or service, giving them more chances to choose it.

Based on these reviews, researchers wanted to see if they could predict a movie's success. It turned out that the so-called failure harbingers did exist. Researchers used text analytics to examine the writing style of these harbingers of failure to comprehend this paradox, revealing their personality traits and cognitive biases. The fact that harbinger critics use fewer self-reference pronouns and tend to write formally and analytically came to light.