MovieMod™ is a recommendation and decision support system for prerelease market evaluation of movie titles carried under BuyBye™ DVD.
In spite of the high financial stakes involved in marketing new motion pictures, marketing science models typically have not been applied to the prerelease market evaluation of motion pictures. However, certain models have been developed that can help pick titles with a better chance for success and lower inventories levels.
The motion picture industry poses some unique challenges. For example, the consumer adoption process for movies is very sensitive to word-of-mouth interactions, which are difficult to measure and predict before the movie has been released. Through the development of the MovieMod.com website, we have undertaken the challenge to develop and implement a prerelease market recommendation and evaluation tool for our customers of the BuyBye limited DVD movie product.
MovieMod.com is designed to generate unit sales forecasts (by title) and to support marketing decisions for a new movie after the movie has been produced, but before it has been released on limited play. The calibration of MovieMod does not require any actual sales data. Also, the data collection time for a product with a limited lifetime does not take long. MovieMod only takes two days in a "consumer clinic" to collect the data needed for the prediction of limited play sales and the evaluation of alternative marketing plans. This data from the "consumer clinic" is a study conducted via a sampling of U.S. consumers.
The model is based on a behavioral representation of the consumer adoption process for movies. According to this model, at any point in time with respect to the movie under study, a consumer can be found in one of the following behavioral states: undecided, considerer, rejecter, positive spreader, negative spreader, and inactive.
The progression of consumers through the behavioral states depends on a set of movie-specific factors that are related to the marketing mix, as well as on a set of more general behavioral factors that characterize the movie-going behavior in the population of interest. This model allows us to account for word-of-mouth interactions among potential adopters and several types of word-of-mouth spreaders in the population. Marketing variables that influence the transitions among the states are movie theme acceptability, promotion strategy, distribution strategy, and the movie experience. The model is calibrated in a consumer clinic experiment. Respondents fill out a questionnaire with general items related to their movie-going and movie communication behavior, they are exposed to different sets of information stimuli, and finally, they fill out pre-viewing movie evaluations, including word-of-mouth intentions. These measures are used to estimate behavioral factors, as well as the movie-specific parameters of the model.
MovieMod produces forecasts of the awareness, adoption intention, and cumulative penetration for a new movie within the population of interest for a given base marketing plan. It also provides diagnostic information on the likely impact of alternative marketing plans on the commercial performance of a new movie. The model offers the opportunity to simulate the effects of alternative marketing plans and will help our customers to best determine which movie titles will have the highest propensity for success within their stores. Beyond the base application, the effects of extra advertising and point of purchase displays (compared to the base marketing plan of the movie distributor) will be analyzed. We intend to demonstrate the value of these decision-support capabilities of MovieMod in assisting buyer/purchasers and managers to identify a final plan that will result in increased revenue performance.
Additional services beyond the recommendation and support system will include an inventory, by date, of titles, including: date of title release, a brief synopsis of the movie title, marketing materials that will be made available to the retailer in the form of artwork and a selection thereof, and a system to help retailers manage their inventory to so we may reduce the chance of return of product.
For more information on MovieMod, please visit the website at http://www.MovieMod.com.
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