The Effect of Internet WOM on Box Office Revenue - an Empirical Study based on the Movie Market in Chinese Mainland.

Under the background of the rapid development of the Internet, Internet Word-of-Mouth (WOM) gradually highlights its unique power and becomes an important factor affecting the movie market. In this paper, we study the effect of the Internet WOM on box office, and reveal the important influence of Internet WOM for the film industry. As a cultural product, movie box office is affected by many factors. We introduce the origin of the film, film types, whether a remake, sequel or adapted, movie schedule, actor appeal, and director appeal as the moderating variables between Internet WOM and box office. The results showed that film types, whether a remake, sequel or adapt and director appeal influence the volume and valence of Internet WOM, then influence the movie box office, while the origin of the film, movie schedule and actor appeal are insignificant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]