Mere newness: Decline of movie preference over time

• Author: Jason Y. C. Ho,Robert E. Krider,Jennifer Chang
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/cjas.1394
• Published date: 01 March 2017
• Date: 01 March 2017

Mere newness: Decline of movie preference over

time

Jason Y. C. Ho*

Simon Fraser University

Robert E. Krider

Simon Fraser University

Jennifer Chang

Simon Fraser University

Abstract

We investigate the possibility that an individual-level decline

in preference over time is responsible for the well-known

decline in a movie’s revenues after opening. In the f‌irst part

of this study, using a Canadian panel we show that such a

decline does indeed occur in both individual consumers’an-

ticipated liking of movies, and in actual movie choice. The

second part explores the mere newness effect building on

the fact that new products carry both private and social

values, and proposes that these values decay continuously

over time. Capitalizing on the notion that characteristics of

market mavens interact differently with private and social

values, we develop and show support for hypotheses based

on the proposed mechanism. Copyright © 2016 ASAC.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: mere newness, movies, new products, market

mavens, social value

Résumé

Dans cet article, nous examinons la possibilité qu’un déclin

dans les préférences sur le plan individuel soit, à la longue,

responsable du déclin bien connu observé dans les revenus

d’un f‌ilm après sa sortie. Ce faisant, nous comblons une

lacune qui existe actuellement dans la littérature. Dans la

première partie, nous montrons, à partir d’un panel

canadien, qu’un tel déclin se produit à la fois dans

l’appréciation anticipée des f‌ilms par les consommateurs et

dans le choix des f‌ilms lui-même. La deuxième partie explore

ce pur effet de nouveauté en partant du principe selon lequel

les nouveaux produits comportent des valeurs privées et

sociales; elle montre aussi que ces valeurs se dégradent

continuellement au f‌il du temps. Exploitant les travaux qui

montrent que les caractéristiques des experts du marché

interagissent différemment avec les valeurs sociales et

privées, nous développons et prouvons des hypothèses falsi-

f‌iables basées sur le mécanisme proposé. Copyright © 2016

ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Mots-clés : pure nouveauté, f‌ilms, nouveaux produits,

spécialistes du marché, valeur sociale

While the movie industry still refers to Hollywood

insider William Goldman’s famous quote, “nobody knows

anything”(Goldman, 1983, p. 39) when faced with

predicting a specif‌ic movie’s box off‌ice performance before

its release, academic researchers have identif‌ied robust

patterns in box-off‌ice performance. One such pattern is the

rapid decay of box off‌ice revenues after the opening week.

Specif‌ically, nearly every wide release movie

1

has its weekly

box off‌ice revenues peak in the f‌irst week that the movie is

released, followed by a rapid decline (Figure 1). This is in

stark contrast to the typical sales growth curve for new

nonrepeat purchase products, with sales gradually increasing,

peaking, and then declining (e.g., Mahajan, Muller, & Bass,

1990). The “peak in the opening week”pattern is consistently

observed in a wide variety of movie studies at the aggregate

market level (e.g., Sawhney & Eliashberg, 1996; Krider &

Weinberg, 1998) andeven at the level of individual showings

of a movie at a specif‌ic theatre (Eliashberg et al., 2009).

Previous studies attribute the rapidly decaying sales

pattern to some macro level mechanisms such as depletion

of potential audiences from a f‌ixed pool (Bass, 1969; Moul,

2007; Sawhney & Eliashberg, 1996), possibly arising from

movie marketers maximizing audiences in the opening week

by such common tactics as prelaunch advertising (Ho, Dhar,

& Weinberg, 2009) or decreasing product availability due

to the decreasing number of theatres screening the movie

The authors are grateful for the support of SSHRC Canada.

*Please address correspondence to: Jason Y. C. Ho, Beedie School of

Business, Simon Fraser University. Email: jason_ho_3@sfu.ca

Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences

Revue canadienne des sciences de l’administration

34:33–46 (2017)

Published online 12 August 2016 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/CJAS.1394

Can J Adm Sci

34(1), 33–46 (2017)Copyright © 2016 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 33