Examining the Influences of Word-of-Mouth towards Sequels in Motion Picture Industry and the Effects of Product Knowledge and Tie-strength on Word-of-Mouth Behaviour

Research purpose: This paper aims to investigate the influences of Word-of-Mouth communication and critics reviews, advertising, movie genres and previous series quality have on consumers level of satisfaction towards sequels in the motion picture industry in U.K. In addition, this article also attempts to examine the degree of influences that Word-of-Mouth exerts across different product knowledge levels and scale of social-ties. Measurement construct: Conceptual framework is constructed based on the current literatures from Word-of-Mouth communication and motion picture performance fields. Questionnaire survey is conduced in U.K and Ireland, which 80 valid responses are collected to test the hypotheses. Findings: As a result of the investigation, this study suggests in U.K, the most critical factor that influences consumers level of satisfaction towards sequels is critics reviews, which in turn positively influences consumers recommendation choices. The impact of WOM on consumers level of satisfaction is much less significant. In addition, the influence of WOM on consumers sequel choice is not differed significantly across product knowledge levels and scale of social-ties; nevertheless, there are still marginal differences exist. The finding also suggests that the critics effect on WOM choice varies significantly across consumers scale of social-ties. Research implication/limitation: this paper identifies the most influential source that affect consumers satisfaction level towards sequels and how the influences of WOM and critical comments on consumer recommendation choices differs across product knowledge levels and scale of social-ties in motion picture industry in U.K. However, the findings may not truly represent the dynamism of consumers sequel choices since the sample size is considerable small and many of the respondents are international students