The Research On The Box Office Effects Of Social Media Attention In The Mobile Internet Era

Film industry, as an important impulse to China cultural industry development, has made great progress with its market economy reform has been deepened from 1992, the time when movie reform was put forward formally. Especially in the era of mobile internet, mobile webified Chinese film industry presented to be high growth in box-office market. Social media has become an important platform for film marketing, social media attention means business.Long before mobile network technology generated, social media applications have appeared in the Internet 1.0 era, marketing scholars around social media marketing launched a series of studies. Researches on theories and practices almost all shown that social media can be obtained at a lower cost dissemination of results and impact of considerable depth. The mobile network and mobile communications technology made social media unprecedented development, and also spawned a lot of the emerging field of studes. Researching on social media attention, based on information technology, is one of the most important research focus. Economic relations in the field of film and film gains public attention has been holding strong interest, because numerous studies around the movie box office factors have shown that these factors lead to different levels of public concern and willingness of consumers viewing closely, thereby affecting the film proceeds. Strong correlations movie marketing keenly aware of public concern, and box office between studies from different angles trying to explain the issues of public concern. Previous studies scholars generally use word of mouth network, topic and activity is an indirect measure of video search and other indicators as a proxy for the degree of public attention. But on the one hand, these indicators do not directly measure the strength of the one hand and trends of public concern, on the other hand, most of the existing research data using a single platform or single proxy variable, not more three-dimensional expression of social media attention on the influence and predict the box office. The development of information technology and data analysis techniques of social media record of user behavior data collection and analysis can be achieved, which is the study of social media attention, providing a precise and intuitive metrics.Focused on Chinese film market, using data of heat index from Sina Weibo and internet word of mouth( E-WOM) from Douban, as the proxy of attention, the research generated 6 variables of hot degree and E-WOM respectively. After the manual collecting of 3 types data, box-office, heat index and E-WOM, of 52 films released in 2015 and in the monthly top 10 lists, panel data models are settled, to empirical analyze the relationship between social media attention and movie box-office revenue combined with the effects of the life cycleThis paper is divided into 6 chapters. The first chapter expounds the background, objectives and meanings of study, also the arrangement of paper’s structure and technology roadmap. The second chapter illustrates the related theories of social media attention, including social media marketing, social net theory and consumer behavior decision theory. The third chapter exlains empirical research design, including hypotheses, samples, variables and so on. The fourth chapter includes the empirical research of the role of social media attention in films’ weekly box-office performance. The fifth chapter summarizes the conclusions and suggestions this paper’s study. The last chapter points out the possible innovation and shortage of this research.This research proved that:(1) Film heat index and box office receipts in the social media has a significant positive correlation. Especially in the early cinema life cycle, its impact effects had a trend of increases with time, and late in life cycle, is to promote the main strength of the box office revenue growth.(2) Network ratings on social have positive impact on box office revenue, either positive E-WOM or negative one, both correlated to box office significantly. Wherein the harmful effects of negative E-WOM on the movie box office more than boosting the role of positive E-WOM, especially late in the film release period, negative reputation of diminishing marginal utility grossed more prominent.(3) Hot degree and E-WOM, conditions each other and influences each other, also adjusted by consumer Limited rationality, at different stages of the life cycle of the cinema, the interaction of social media attention influences the actual purchasing behavior of consumers and the box-office market performance.This study can provide film distribution company a reference for social media marketing strategy layout in the mobile Internet era, and help high-quality films win a better recognized by the market, so as to promote the healthy development of Chinese film industry.