Skip to main content
Disciplines
Automotive Business IT + Informatics Construction + Real Estate Electrical Engineering + Electronics Energy + Sustainability Insurance + Risk Finance + Banking Management + Leadership Marketing + Sales Mechanical Engineering + Materials
Events
DE
EN
Books
Journals
Topic Page
Marketing
Start single access now
Access for companies
EXTENDED SEARCH
Log in
Top
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science
Published in: Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 6/2021

14-06-2021 | Original Empirical Research

Relating entertainment features in screenplays to movie performance: an empirical investigation

Authors: Brianna JeeWon Paulich, V. Kumar

Published in: Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science | Issue 6/2021

Log in

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config
loading …

Abstract

The performance of entertainment products depends on their ability to transport the audience into the narrative. Deriving entertainment features (imagery and display of emotions) from screenplays, we empirically test the theory-inspired conceptual framework. The proposed framework details the nonlinear effects of imagery and display of emotions and their synergistic effects on box office performance. We correct for the sample selection bias using a sample of unproduced and produced screenplays as well as for the endogeneity due to the omitted variable bias. The results show that the increase in the relative number of characters and dialogs, decrease in scene pace, and increases in emotionality and positivity improve the box office return on investment (ROI) at a decreasing rate. A 1% desired change in entertainment features corresponds to a 1.97% increase in ROI, which is equivalent to a $1.24 million increase in revenue (assuming an average budget). Overall, this study enables film studios to identify and craft screenplays that have the potential to perform well in the box office.
previous article Self-oriented competitiveness in salespeople: sales management implications
next article Correction to: Relating entertainment features in screenplays to movie performance: an empirical investigation

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

  • über 102.000 Bücher
  • über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

  • Automobil + Motoren
  • Bauwesen + Immobilien
  • Business IT + Informatik
  • Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
  • Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
  • Finance + Banking
  • Management + Führung
  • Marketing + Vertrieb
  • Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
  • Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

  • über 67.000 Bücher
  • über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

  • Bauwesen + Immobilien
  • Business IT + Informatik
  • Finance + Banking
  • Management + Führung
  • Marketing + Vertrieb
  • Versicherung + Risiko




Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now
Appendix
Available only for authorised users
Footnotes
2
The value chain for motion pictures is production, theatrical distribution, and exhibition. Details of movie production timeline are available in Eliashberg et al. (2006).
 
3
Eliashberg et al. (2007, 2014) do not call these screenplay characteristics “imagery.” However, based on our conversations with a few movie directors/producers, imagery is referred to by many as the visual screenplay characteristics, such as the features captured in their study.
 
4
We also asked two independent professionals with script reading experience and training in film production to read each script and measure the completeness of emotional features captured from LIWC. The interrater reliability is 86%, suggesting a high level of agreement between the raters on the acceptability of the emotional measures.
 
5
One may argue that the domestic financial information is an incomplete measure because film studios often generate significant revenue in foreign markets. In Web Appendix B, we perform additional analyses for worldwide box office revenue and ROI. We find consistent effects of imagery features and display of emotions of screenplay on worldwide performance measures. These results are not surprising because the correlation between domestic and worldwide box office performances is very high (ρ = .95) in our sample, which suggests that movies that perform well in the U.S. also perform well globally.
 
6
We add a small constant before taking the log transformation to prevent taking the log of negative values.
 
7
VIF of the screenplay features are less than 1.3 for both revenue and ROI models. We also provide stepwise analyses in Web Appendix C and find that the coefficients are relatively stable, confirming that multicollinearity is not a major issue.
 
8
We test for the validity of the IVs with the Sargan-Hansen test (Kennedy, 2003). The null hypothesis is that the instruments are exogenous and uncorrelated with the error term, and we failed to reject the null. Thus, the instruments in the estimation are valid.
 
9
Since the IMR from the Heckman process and the endogeneity correction terms from the control function approach included in Eq. 1 are not from the original data, we use bootstrapping to compute the standard errors (Petrin & Train, 2010). The reported standard errors are derived from 1000 bootstrapped samples.
 
Literature
Ahmed, S., & Sinha, A. (2016). When it pays to wait: Optimizing release timing decisions for secondary channels in the film industry. Journal of Marketing, 80(4), 20–38.CrossRef
Albert, S. (1998). Movie stars and the distribution of financially successful films in the motion picture industry. Journal of Cultural Economics, 22(4), 249–270.CrossRef
Appel, M., & Richter, T. (2010). Transportation and need for affect in narrative persuasion: A mediated moderation model. Media Psychology, 13(2), 101–135.CrossRef
Austin, B. A. (1986). Motivations for movie attendance. Communication Quarterly, 34(2), 115–126.CrossRef
Bagozzi, R. P., Gopinath, M., & Nyer, P. U. (1999). The role of emotions in marketing. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 27(2), 184–206.CrossRef
Basuroy, S., Chatterjee, S., & Ravid, S. A. (2003). How critical are critical reviews? The box office effects of film critics, star power, and budgets. Journal of Marketing, 67(4), 103–117.CrossRef
Belsley, D. A., Kuh, E., & Welsch, R. E. (2005). Regression diagnostics: Identifying influential data and sources of collinearity (Vol. 571): John Wiley & Sons.
Berger, J., & Milkman, K. L. (2012). What makes online content viral? Journal of Marketing Research, 49(2), 192–205.CrossRef
Berger, J., Humphreys, A., Ludwig, S., Moe, W. W., Netzer, O., & Schweidel, D. A. (2020). Uniting the tribes: Using text for marketing insight. Journal of Marketing, 84(1), 1–25.CrossRef
Berger, J., Kim, Y. D., & Meyer, R. (2021). What Makes Content Engaging? How Emotional Dynamics Shape Success. .
Boksem, M. A. S., & Smidts, A. L. E. (2015). Brain responses to movie trailers predict individual preferences for movies and their population-wide commercial success. Journal of Marketing Research, 52(4), 482–492.CrossRef
Bywaters, M., Andrade, J., & Turpin, G. (2004). Determinants of the vividness of visual imagery: The effects of delayed recall, stimulus affect and individual differences. Memory, 12(4), 479–488.CrossRef
Certo, S. T., Busenbark, J. R., Woo, H.-s., & Semadeni, M. (2016). Sample selection bias and Heckman models in strategic management research. Strategic Management Journal, 37(13), 2639–2657.CrossRef
Chintagunta, P. K., Gopinath, S., & Venkataraman, S. (2010). The effects of online user reviews on movie box office performance: Accounting for sequential. Marketing Science, 29(5), 944–957.CrossRef
Cutting, J. E. (2016). The evolution of pace in popular movies. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 1(30), 1–21.
Del Vecchio, M., Kharlamov, A., Parry, G., & Pogrebna, G. (2020). Improving productivity in Hollywood with data science: Using emotional arcs of movies to drive product and service innovation in entertainment industries. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 1–28.
Delre, S. A., Broekhuizen, T. L. J., & Bijmolt, T. H. A. (2016). The effects of shared consumption on product life cycles and advertising effectiveness: The case of the motion picture market. California Management Review, 53(4), 608–627.
DiMaggio, P. J., & Powell, W. W. (1983). The Iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review, 48(2), 147–160.CrossRef
Dotzel, T., & Shankar, V. (2019). The relative effects of business-to-business (vs. business-to-consumer) service innovations on firm value and firm risk: An empirical analysis. Journal of Marketing, 83(5), 133–152.CrossRef
Drolet, A., & Luce, M. F. (2004). The rationalizing effects of cognitive load on emotion-based trade-off avoidance. Journal of Consumer Research, 31(1), 63–77.CrossRef
Elberse, A. (2007). The power of stars: Do star actors drive the success of movies? Journal of Marketing, 71(4), 102–120.CrossRef
Elberse, A. (2013). Blockbusters: Hit-making, risk-taking, and the big business of entertainment. Henry Holt and Company.
Elberse, A., & Anand, B. (2007). The effectiveness of pre-release advertising for motion pictures: An empirical investigation using a simulated market. Information Economics and Policy, 19(3), 319–343.CrossRef
Elberse, A., & Eliashberg, J. (2003). Demand and supply dynamics for sequentially released products in international markets: The case of motion pictures. Marketing Science, 22(3), 329–354.CrossRef
Eliashberg, J., & Sawhney, M. S. (1994). Modeling goes to Hollywood: Predicting individual differences in movie enjoyment. Management Science, 40(9), 1151–1173.CrossRef
Eliashberg, J., Elberse, A., & Leenders, M. A. A. M. (2006). The motion picture industry: Critical issues in practice, current research, and new research directions. Marketing Science, 25(6), 638–661.CrossRef
Eliashberg, J., Hui, S. K., & Zhang, Z. J. (2007). From story line to box office: A new approach for green-lighting movie scripts. Management Science, 53(6), 881–893.CrossRef
Eliashberg, J., Hui, S. K., & Zhang, Z. J. (2014). Assessing box office performance using movie scripts: A kernel-based approach. Knowledge and Data Engineering, IEEE Transactions on, 26(11), 2639–2648.CrossRef
Escalas, J. E. (2007). Self-referencing and persuasion: Narrative transportation versus analytical elaboration. Journal of Consumer Research, 33(4), 421–429.CrossRef
Field, S. (2007). Screenplay: The foundations of screenwriting: Delta.
Fowdur, L., Kadiyali, V., & Narayan, V. (2009). The impact of emotional product attributes on consumer demand: An application to the U.S. motion picture industry. SSRN Electronic Journal.
Gable, P. A., & Harmon-Jones, E. (2008). Approach-motivated positive affect reduces breadth of attention. Psychological Science, 19(5), 476–482.CrossRef
Galak, J., Kruger, J., & Loewenstein, G. (2013). Slow down! Insensitivity to rate of consumption leads to avoidable satiation. Journal of Consumer Research, 39(5), 993–1009.CrossRef
Germann, F., Ebbes, P., & Grewal, R. (2015). The chief marketing officer matters! Journal of Marketing, 79(3), 1–22.CrossRef
Gerrig, R. J. (1989). Reexperiencing fiction and non-fiction. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 47(3), 277–280.CrossRef
Green, M. C. (2004). Transportation into narrative worlds: The role of prior knowledge and perceived realism. Discourse Processes, 38(2), 247–266.CrossRef
Green, M. C. (2008). Transportation theory. In W. Donsbach (Ed.), The international encyclopedia of communication (pp. 5170–5175). Wiley Online Library.
Green, M. C., & Brock, T. C. (2000). The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(5), 701–721.CrossRef
Green, M. C., & Brock, T. C. (2002). In the mind's eye: Transportation-imagery model of narrative persuasion.
Green, M. C., Brock, T. C., & Kaufman, G. F. (2004). Understanding media enjoyment: The role of transportation into narrative worlds. Communication Theory, 14(4), 311–327.CrossRef
Grodal, T. (1999). Moving pictures: A new theory of film genres, feelings, and cognition.
Gunter, B. (2018). How important is the screenplay to box office performance? In Predicting Movie Success at the Box Office (pp. 145-160): Springer.
Heath, T. B., Chatterjee, S., Basuroy, S., Hennig-Thurau, T., & Kocher, B. (2015). Innovation sequences over iterated offerings: A relative innovation, comfort, and stimulation framework of consumer responses. Journal of Marketing, 79(6), 71–93.CrossRef
Heckman, J. J. (1979). Sample selection Bias as a specification error. Econometrica, 47(1), 153–161.CrossRef
Hennig-Thurau, T., & Houston, M. B. (2019). Entertainment science: Data analytics and practical theory for movies, games, books, and music: Springer International Publishing.
Hennig-Thurau, T., Houston, M. B., & Sridhar, S. (2006). Can good marketing carry a bad product? Evidence from the motion picture industry. Marketing Letters, 17(3), 205–219.CrossRef
Hennig-Thurau, T., Houston, M. B., & Walsh, G. (2007). Determinants of motion picture box office and profitability: An interrelationship approach. Review of Managerial Science, 1(1), 65–92.CrossRef
Hirschman, E. C., & Holbrook, M. B. (1982). Hedonic consumption: Emerging concepts, methods and propositions. Journal of Marketing, 46(3), 92–101.CrossRef
Hockrow, R. (2014). Out of order: Storytelling techniques for video and cinema editors: Peachpit Press.
Hunter, S. D., Smith, S., & Singh, S. (2016). Predicting box office from the screenplay: A text analytical approach. Journal of Screenwriting, 7(2), 135–154.CrossRef
Joshi, A., & Mao, H. (2012). Adapting to succeed? Leveraging the brand equity of best sellers to succeed at the box office. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 40(4), 558–571.CrossRef
Keane, C. (2009). How to write a selling screenplay: Three Rivers Press.
Keller, K. L. (2002). Strategic Brand Management (2nd ed.). Prentice Hall.
Kennedy, P. (2003). A Guide to Econometrics. MIT Press.
Kenning, J. (2006). How to be your own script doctor: Bloomsbury Academic.
Krider, R. E., & Weinberg, C. B. (1998). Competitive dynamics and the introduction of new products: The motion picture timing game. Journal of Marketing Research, 35(1), 1–15.CrossRef
Kupfer, A.-K., Pähler vor der Holte, N., Kübler, R. V., & Hennig-Thurau, T. (2018). The role of the partner Brand's social media power in brand alliances. Journal of Marketing, 82(3), 25–44.
Lang, P. J. (1977). Imagery in therapy: An information processing analysis of fear. Behavior Therapy, 8(5), 862–886.CrossRef
Lang, P. J., Bradley, M. M., Fitzsimmons, J. R., Cuthbert, B. N., Scott, J. D., Moulder, B., & Nangia, V. (1998). Emotional arousal and activation of the visual cortex: An fMRI analysis. Psychophysiology, 35(2), 199–210.CrossRef
Leisch, F. (2004). FlexMix: A general framework for finite mixture models and latent class regression in R. Journal of Statistical Software, 11(8).
Liu, Y. (2006). Word of mouth for movies: Its dynamics and impact on box office revenue. Journal of Marketing, 70(3), 74–89.CrossRef
Liu, A., Mazumdar, T., & Li, B. (2015). Counterfactual decomposition of movie star effects with star selection. Management Science, 61(7), 1704–1721.CrossRef
Liu, X., Shi, S. W., Teixeira, T., & Wedel, M. (2018). Video content marketing: The making of clips. Journal of Marketing, 82(4), 86–101.CrossRef
MacInnis, D. J., & Price, L. L. (1987). The role of imagery in information processing: Review and extensions. Journal of Consumer Research, 13(4), 473–491.CrossRef
McGraw, A. P., & Warren, C. (2010). Benign violations: Making immoral behavior funny. Psychological Science, 21(8), 1141–1149.CrossRef
McKee, R. (1997). Story: substance, structure, style, and the principles of screenwriting: HarperCollins Publishers.
Mukherjee, A., & Kadiyali, V. (2011). Modeling multichannel home video demand in the U.S. motion picture industry. Journal of Marketing Research, 48(6), 985–995.CrossRef
Murtagh, F., Ganz, A., & McKie, S. (2009). The structure of narrative: The case of film scripts. Pattern Recognition, 42(2), 302–312.CrossRef
Neelamegham, R., & Chintagunta, P. (1999). A Bayesian model to forecast new product performance in domestic and international markets. Marketing Science, 18(2), 115–136.CrossRef
Nelmes, J. (2010). Realism and screenplay dialogue. In J. Nelmes (Ed.), Analysing the screenplay (p. 217). Taylor & Francis.
Pennebaker, J. W., Boyd, R. L., Jordan, K., & Blackburn, K. (2015). The development and psychometric properties of LIWC2015. University of Texas at Austin.
Peteraf, M., & Shanley, M. (1997). Getting to know you: A theory of strategic group identity. Strategic Management Journal, 18, 165–186.CrossRef
Petrin, A., & Train, K. (2010). A control function approach to endogeneity in consumer choice models. Journal of Marketing Research, 47(1), 3–13.CrossRef
Petrova, P. K., & Cialdini, R. B. (2005). Fluency of consumption imagery and the backfire effects of imagery appeals. Journal of Consumer Research, 32(3), 442–452.CrossRef
Reagan, A. J., Mitchell, L., Kiley, D., Danforth, C. M., & Dodds, P. S. (2016). The emotional arcs of stories are dominated by six basic shapes. EPJ Data Science, 5(1), 31.CrossRef
Reisenzein, R. (1994). Pleasure-arousal theory and the intensity of emotions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(3), 525–5398.CrossRef
Sawhney, M. S., & Eliashberg, J. (1996). A parsimonious model for forecasting gross box-office revenues of motion pictures. Marketing Science, 15(2), 113–131.CrossRef
Selbo, J. (2015). Screenplay: Building story through character (2nd ed.): Routledge.
Simonton, D. K. (2009). Cinematic success criteria and their predictors: The art and business of the film industry. Psychology & Marketing, 26(5), 400–420.CrossRef
Slater, M. D., & Rouner, D. (2002). Entertainment—Education and elaboration likelihood: Understanding the processing of narrative persuasion. Communication Theory, 12(2), 173–191.
Teixeira, T., Wedel, M., & Pieters, R. (2012). Emotion-induced engagement in internet video advertisements. Journal of Marketing Research, 49(2), 144–159.CrossRef
Tellis, G. J., MacInnis, D. J., Tirunillai, S., & Zhang, Y. (2019). What drives Virality (sharing) of online digital content? The critical role of information, emotion, and brand prominence. Journal of Marketing, 83(4), 1–20.CrossRef
Toubia, O., Iyengar, G., Bunnell, R., & Lemaire, A. (2019). Extracting features of entertainment products: A guided latent Dirichlet allocation approach informed by the psychology of media consumption. Journal of Marketing Research, 56(1), 18–36.CrossRef
van Laer, T., de Ruyter, K., Visconti, L. M., & Wetzels, M. (2014). The extended transportation-imagery model: A meta-analysis of the antecedents and consequences of Consumers' narrative transportation. Journal of Consumer Research, 40(5), 797–817.CrossRef
Vogel, H. L. (2014). Entertainment industry economics: A guide for financial analysis: Cambridge University Press.
Metadata
Title
Relating entertainment features in screenplays to movie performance: an empirical investigation
Authors
Brianna JeeWon Paulich
V. Kumar
Publication date
14-06-2021
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science / Issue 6/2021
Print ISSN: 0092-0703
Electronic ISSN: 1552-7824
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-021-00794-y

Other articles of this Issue 6/2021

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 6/2021 Go to the issue

Correction

Correction to: Operationalizing salesperson performance with secondary data: aligning practice, scholarship, and theory

Original Empirical Research

Separating customer heterogeneity, points pressure and rewarded behavior to assess a retail loyalty program

Original Empirical Research

The influence of the online community, professional critics, and location similarity on review ratings for niche and mainstream brands

Original Empirical Research

From franchisee experience to customer experience: their effects on franchisee performance

Correction

Correction to: Relating entertainment features in screenplays to movie performance: an empirical investigation

Original Empirical Research

Space between products on display: the impact of interspace on consumer estimation of product size