This two-part post was excerpted from the research conducted and report written by Carnegie Mellon Master of Entertainment Industry Management students Peter Geyer, Claudeen Guillaume, Fangyi Liu, Zhuo Sun, and Luran Zhang.

As movie theaters reopen across the country, it is important to understand the significant factors that encourage a moviegoer to purchase a ticket. The following research, conducted pre-pandemic, uncovered different decision-making paths among frequent and occasional moviegoers. A frequent moviegoer is one who watches 12 or more movies in a theatre per year and an occasional moviegoer is one who watches six to 11 movies theatrically per year.

Trends in Movie Theater Attendance

The tastes, preferences, and behaviors of moviegoers are ever-changing and difficult to track, especially in the modern entertainment industry when content is being churned out at higher rates than ever. There has been little progress in moviegoing research over the years regarding predicting consumer behaviors and preferences. This is contrary to the data obtained by streaming services which provides a much more intuitive and accurate report on viewers’ preferences and engagement. To get a sense of the consumers’ decision-making process and behavior, the researchers gathered quantitative data and found that, when compared to occasional moviegoers, frequent moviegoers are first exposed to movies earlier. Both frequent and occasional moviegoers are exposed through trailers, but frequent moviegoers first see the trailers online while occasional moviegoers are exposed through theatrical trailers. Occasional moviegoers make their purchase decision earlier than their frequent counterparts and further use online trailers along with recommendations from family and friends to decide. For frequent moviegoers, after first exposure, their decision is shaped by theatre trailers and influencers. Both groups purchase tickets at the theater on the day of the screening and attend the screening with their friends. Another difference is that frequent moviegoers often attend with their significant others. From these findings, a common decision-making journey for both occasional and frequent moviegoers seemed to form.

As movie theater ticket prices rise and the number of tickets sold yearly decreases, studios, distributors, and exhibitors are amplifying the search to find ways to reverse these trends, bring larger audiences back to theaters, and understand exactly what people want to experience when at the theater. Although it is commonly thought that the rise of streaming will ultimately lead to fewer people attending theatrical movie screenings, a study conducted by Ernst & Young’s Quantitative Economics and Statistics group in late 2018 found that theatergoing is not being replaced by streaming. The study implies that the solution is not about combating at-home and mobile services but satisfying moviegoers’ changing content preferences, in which theaters still play a large role, and marketing that content to the right consumers during a movie’s promotional campaign.

There have been recent instances where movies have greatly underperformed at the box office. “Cats” (2019), for example, was projected to make $15 million to $17 million during the opening weekend but made only $6.5 million. Even “Dark Phoenix” (2019), the latest movie in the 19-year history of the X-Men franchise, was projected to open at $50 million less than a month before its release, which is far below any of the other recent entries in the franchise. This forecast was already low for the $200 million feature, but even worse is that its actual opening was less than $33 million, highlighting the industry need for a better understanding of modern consumers’ decision-making processes to view a film in a movie theater.

As digital transformation disrupts the entertainment industry, consumer behavior trends have become increasingly unpredictable for companies without a direct-to-consumer business model. The problem of the decline in movie attendance triggers an imminent question of how studios can effectively maximize the effectiveness of a film’s marketing campaigns to make sure every dollar they spend on promotion has a positive impact on the theatrical moviegoers. A chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment claims that there must be theatrical urgency to generate people’s initial interest in seeing a movie and to motivate those interested to get out and view it in a theater.

Factors in Decision Making

To uncover consumers’ interests and behavior, the following research attempts to answer the question: what are the significant factors that encourage a moviegoer to purchase a ticket? It will focus on mid-budget films (between $20 and $80 million). Existing research in the area is sparse. Two notable studies are by Bruce A. Austin and Dyna Herlina.

Bruce A. Austin recognized the urgency of expanding research in this area. Using a quantitative method in his research, Motivation for Movie Attendance, Austin investigated college students' motives for movie attendance and the relationship between the motivations and frequency of attendance. In this study, a total of 493 students in a Northeastern University completed a survey instrument in which they were asked to indicate the extent to which a series of reasons for moviegoing matched their reasons for attendance.

Austin performed the data analysis using R^2 estimates with iterations and orthogonal rotation, as Figure 1 demonstrates below. The regression results indicated that frequent moviegoers identified more of the motives than occasional moviegoers, and there were significant positive associations between the frequency of attendance and nine of the 12 motives he provided in his survey.

Dyna Herlina, the author of “Identifying Key Factors Affecting Consumer Decision Making Behavior in Cinema Context: A Qualitative Approach,” sought to assess decision-making factors through qualitative research. Herlina acknowledged the path of more general consumer behavior, from experience before taking actions, to purchase behavior, then to remember the product consumption by using the existing rational and emotional purchase decision models. However, Herlina insisted that the “choose-forming factors” are complex, which required other researchers to conduct exploratory research with a quantitative approach to capture the general factors influencing moviegoers’ decision-making process.

Herlina utilized the focus group discussions (FGD) as her data collection techniques. For each FGD, researchers grouped six to eight respondents who were frequent moviegoers and were selected from seven different days since the price of the movie tickets varied from day to day during that time. It aimed to eliminate the possibility that “there are consumers who come under the price variations.”

Herlina’s research extended her focus on decision making to the experience of watching the movie. By asking questions relating to information and characteristics of the film, Herlina was able to identify the respondents’ tendency to choose certain information sources to rely on when it comes to movie selection and movie taste. According to Herlina, there are key factors that affect consumers’ decisions of choosing a film in theaters, which are:

Marketing communications
Source of neutral information
Film characteristics
Ease

Each has an impact on the decision-making process while the primary consumer consideration is marketing communication, which triggered conversation among consumers. The marketing communication channels can be advertising or publicity distributed in many media containing messages such as the title, director, producer, the music, genre, behind the scenes, etc., which informs moviegoers on movie selections. Consumers who get exposure to marketing materials—including but not limited to trailers and posters—will relate to the story, any objectionable content, and technology. The materials will give rise to hopes of a certain expectation of a movie. This is where the studies reinforce the power of marketing in the consumers’ purchasing behaviors and moviegoing experience related to the frequency of movie attendance.

Conclusion

While these studies provide useful insights and frameworks for analyzing the customer journey to purchase, they do not give a more current, post-OTT, perspective. To accomplish this, we conducted a survey to evaluate movie preferences, media behavior, and influences. This survey focused on individuals who attended a movie in 2019. Survey findings and overall recommendations can be found in Part 2 of this report.

Resources

Austin, B. (2009, May 21). Motivations for Movie Attendance. Retrieved November 9, 2019, from https://doi.org/10.1080/01463378609369627.

Galuppo, M. (2019, May 16). Box Office: 'Dark Phoenix' Tracking for $50M Bow. Retrieved February 7, 2020 from https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/x-men-moviedark-phoenix-tracking-50m-box-office-bow-1211249?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter.

Herlina, D. (2012, January 7). Identifying Key Factors Affecting Consumer Decision Making Behavior in Cinema Context: A Qualitative Approach. Retrieved February 29, 2020 from http://psrcentre.org/images/extraimages/11.%200112271.pdf.

Koblin, J. (2020, January 9). Peak TV Hits a New Peak, With 532 Scripted Shows. Retrieved March 7, 2020 from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/business/media/tv-shows-2020.html.

Lang, B. (2018, December 17). Netflix Isn't Killing Movie Theaters, Study Shows. Retrieved January 5, 2020, from https://variety.com/2018/film/news/streaming-netflix-movietheaters-1203090899/.

Rubin, R. (2019, December 10). Can 'Cats' Find New Life at the Box Office? Retrieved February 5, 2020, from https://variety.com/2019/film/news/cats-movie-box-office-openingweekend-1203429030/.

Watson, A. & Box Office Mojo (2019, June 6). Number of movie tickets sold in the United States and Canada from 2001 to 2018 (in millions) [Graph]. In Statista. Retrieved November 10, 2019, from https://www-statistacom.proxy.library.cmu.edu/statistics/187076/tickets-sold-at-the-north-american-boxoffice-since-2001/.

Watson, A., & MPAA. (2019, March 21). Average ticket price at North American movie theaters from 2009 to 2018 (in U.S. dollars) [Graph]. In Statista. Retrieved November 10, 2019, from https://www-statista-com.proxy.library.cmu.edu/statistics/187091/average-ticketprice-at-north-american-movie-theaters-since-2001/.