Abstract
In this chapter, we study branded signals or “quasi-search” characteristics. We define entertainment brands and distinguish the various kinds of brands that exist in this context. We show the strategic options that branding offers entertainment managers and discuss key branding strategies such as brand extensions, category extensions, and the use of stars as branded ingredients or para-social interaction partners of consumers. Taking a franchise perspective requires a unique perspective of brand management; we discuss it and link it with recent meta-franchises such as Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. We conclude the chapter with a look at how the financial value of entertainment brands can be calculated, based on existing data.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
In the case of a country, some actually argue that it can be considered a brand (see for example Kotler and Gertner 2002). But in that case, the brand managers are the country’s politicians or dedicated country marketers, far beyond the realm of a producer of entertainment products. A similar logic applies to country-like labels such as “Made in Hollywood” (see p. 349).
- 2.
When running a simple OLS regression with the awareness of the films among consumers as dependent variable, the release year explained more than 60% of the variation in awareness.
- 3.
The first two types in this list are what entertainment executives often refer to as “I.P.”
- 4.
The essay by Demarais (2009) has some very interesting (though certainly speculative) thoughts on when such self-titling works, and when it does not.
- 5.
Peden (1993) names several additional examples and also gives background information about the practice of using “human brands” as part of movie titles.
- 6.
Caulfield et al. (2011) have compiled a wonderful overview of the most remarkable, and most successful, duets in music history. Enjoy reading (and listening to) it!
- 7.
Crossovers have a long history in popular culture, with Nevins (2011) tracing them back to the Greek myths, when several mythical heroes, including Castor, Pollux and Heracles, join Jason in his search for the Golden Fleece. Other historic cases of crossovers include the teaming of legendary detective characters in Carolyn Wells’ novel Pursuit of the Houseboat (published in 1905) and its sequels, DC Comic’s myriad superheroes forming The Justice League of America, and team-ups of Universal Studio’s horror characters such as Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man in the 1930s and 1940s (e.g., House of Frankenstein from 1944, featuring all three “monsters”). Such crossovers sometimes serve as the basis for the development of their own family brands and also for today’s meta-franchises.
- 8.
As an aside, Mr. Dinklage’s performance was not particularly appreciated by parts of the games community—and later re-dubbed by another actor (though the producer gave other reasons for this move; Philips 2015).
- 9.
We provide an in-depth discussion of the blockbuster concept in our chapter on integrated entertainment marketing.
- 10.
Those 300 films were all German co-/productions that were theatrically released between 2000 and 2008, with the exception of the most successful films and sequels, which we left out because of their popularity. Respondents only rated movies they had not heard of before the survey.
- 11.
See also our discussion of the satiation phenomenon in our chapter on entertainment product characteristics.
- 12.
Examples for such song sequels are David Bowie’s revisiting of his Major Tom character from the song Space Oddity in Ashes to Ashes 11 years later, Eminem’s Bad Guy single which introduces Matthew as the brother of his previous record character Stan, and Austrian singer Falco’s Coming Home (Jeanny Part II, One Year Later), in which he traces the titular character of his scandal hit Jeanny (various more sequels of the song were released after the singer’s death).
- 13.
The highly recommended film documentary From Alpha to Omega: Building a Sequel is a rich source for Entertainment Science scholars and fans on its own, reminding us how strongly today’s version of the industry is shaped by managers, rather than by “natural” forces. We elaborate on this later in this book when we discuss the development of the blockbuster concept as an integrated marketing strategy.
- 14.
They do not name the exact number of sequels in their data set, but it appears to be more than 100.
- 15.
The authors use book ranks at Amazon.de as a proxy of sales.
- 16.
Specifically, we calculated the “distances” between each of the 101 sequels and all nonsequel movies based on a set of key success variables: namely a movie’s production budget, its distribution intensity (in terms of the number of opening theaters), the age-rating, the star power, the existence of a family brand from another product category, and several genres. Then we picked the three nearest “neighbors” for each sequel in the sample. For details about this procedure, see Hennig-Thurau et al. (2009).
- 17.
See our discussion of the important role of risk in entertainment and the need for systematically managing it in our chapter on business models for entertainment.
- 18.
Gong et al. actually make an attempt to control for such bias, but use some of the sequels’ predecessors’ attributes (star power, rating, season of release, and year) as basis for their matching.
- 19.
In our matching estimation, we also test, but do not find for a potential bias by a movie’s star power, the judgment of professional critics, age ratings, and the action, drama, and science-fiction genres.
- 20.
The matching weights served as regression weights.
- 21.
The logic behind this is that a sequel to a film that had a $300 million box office has a higher awareness than one to a film which made only $100 million, but that this might reverse if the former parent movie was released in 1985 and the latter one in 2015.
- 22.
Our forgetting-adjusted measure of brand awareness alone captures more than one-third of the sum of all coefficients. Elasticities are not available for this analysis because we used a standardized version of the variable.
- 23.
The film received only 52% positive reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, for example.
- 24.
See also our more detailed discussion of the franchise concept later in this chapter.
- 25.
As just one example, the American Film Institute in 2008 ranked the film #9 among all westerns (AFI 2008).
- 26.
The most recent installment, The Fate of the Furious , is a peculiarity in the series—being released after Mr. Walker’s death, only Mr. Diesel was able to star in it, but the film was a success nevertheless. Let us add that the commercial power of such lead-actor continuity can benefit not only film producers, but also star actors: when Arnold Schwarzenegger negotiated an unprecedented $29.25 million “pay-or-play” deal for his participation in Terminator 3, plus 20% of the film’s global gross receipts (after breaking even) and also a “pre-approval” clause with regard to the director and other key positions, this was because the film’s major financiers had made his participation a condition for becoming involved in the project. In other words, no Schwarzenegger—no Terminator sequel… (for more details, see Epstein 2010).
- 27.
Even for sequels, high similarity can become problematic over time. We will get back to this when discussing the dynamics of line extensions.
- 28.
Before treating this budget result in a causal way, please see also our discussion of the production budget as a quasi-search quality in entertainment in the previous chapter.
- 29.
The Cinderella (2015) remake made more than $500 million at the global box office, The Jungle Book (2016) almost $1 billion, and Beauty and the Beast (2017) $500 million in its first six days alone, easily covering their production costs of $95 million, $175 million, and $160 million, respectively.
- 30.
See our in-depth discussion of the sensations-familiarity framework in the chapter on entertainment consumption.
- 31.
Please see our discussion of the difficulty of quality judgments as a core characteristic of entertainment in the chapter on product characteristics.
- 32.
Joshi and Mao do not log-transform the box office variables in their study, so that the regression parameters constitute absolute values, not percentage effects.
- 33.
Our study’s focus was on “feedback effects” that describe the impact of the film adaptation on the book—we discuss those in a later section.
- 34.
Hunter III et al. do not study the various sources separately, but aggregate them into a “prior source material” variable, so no source-specific results are reported.
- 35.
See our later discussion on the rise and fall of Cannon in the context of innovation management decisions, which had a lot to do with the temptations that stars can offer.
- 36.
Mr. Hart sent his message in response to being called a “whore” by a Sony executive in a leaked email because he had requested additional payments for promoting one of his films to his fans via social media (Stedman 2014). Please see also our discussion of social media communication by stars as part of our chapter devoted to owned entertainment communication.
- 37.
We discuss such star-product fit in more detail later in this chapter.
- 38.
Wohlfeil and Whelan (2012) offer unique, rich insights into the nature of such fan relationships via an introspective exploration of the first author’s adoration of actress Jenna Malone over several years. And in their complementary work in Wohlfeil and Whelan (2008), they offer qualitative insights into how this fan relationship can affect interest in a movie in which the star appears.
- 39.
For those readers who want to know more: Giles (2002) offers a more recent review of the literature on parasocial relationships.
- 40.
Iron Man 3 provides an example for the latter approach: here Fan Bingbing and other Chinese stars perform surgery on the superhero in an infamous scene that was only included in the Chinese version of the film.
- 41.
We determined this average correlation by inserting the respective values in the regression equation that is reported in Table 3 of Hofmann et al. (2016).
- 42.
They measure artists’ past reputation via the amount of time the artist was on the Billboard Top 200 charts from 1991 to 1994. Album performance of artists’ new albums is an album’s entry rank in the Billboard charts and also its charts positions in the following weeks and months.
- 43.
More specifically, we defined “commercial” stars as those actors or actresses who had been recognized prior to appearing in a film for their previous works in the so-called “Quigley star power list.” The list was published annually since 1932 by Quigley Publishing ; it is based on a survey of theater owners and film buyers which are asked to name “the ten stars that they believe generated the most box-office revenue for their theatres during the year” (QPMedia 2013). We believe the last year the survey was conducted was 2013; historical lists are available at https://goo.gl/U9ube2.
- 44.
This is also what happened at the box office. When Mr. Carrey starred in the horror-thriller The Number 23 a few years after our experimental study, the film underperformed quite drastically, and is one of the actor’s biggest flops.
- 45.
Rosen’s theory is not limited to entertainment, but applies also to other aspects of life where humans offer creative deeds, such as in health care and education.
- 46.
As a side note, this argument bears some resemblance to Bourdieu’s idea that “cultural capital” is required to enjoy cultural products.
- 47.
Let us note that this logic is very similar to the phenomenon of “success-breeds-success” cascades that we discuss later in this book. But whereas Adler discusses consumer choices between stars, success-breeds-success deals with choices between entertainment products.
- 48.
But the low elasticity Hamlen finds in his study might also be the result of measurement error: whereas it seems intuitive that Barbra (“the voice”) Streisand leads the talent ranking, it feels rather counterintuitive that Whitney Houston, often considered the “greatest voice of her generation” (Gill 2012), receives a much lower talent score. And isn’t music talent about more than a singer’s voice anyway?
- 49.
The self-reported character of both talent and success in Wirtz et al.’s study carries the danger of inflating the contribution of talent, because of a “same-source bias.” This bias results from the statistical rule that two subjective judgments made by one person are systematically correlated beyond substantive reasons.
- 50.
One learning for actors from Luo et al.’s study is that risky decisions do not pay off in this context, as the authors find that bad choices leave a stronger mark than do good ones.
- 51.
Like other category extensions, it is not relevant for the franchise logic whether a franchise owner operates the extension product him- or herself, or licenses its right to someone else. Whereas Universal operates the Back to the Future theme park attraction on its own, Warner has licensed the firm the rights for also operating a theme park attraction around its Harry Potter film-based brand.
- 52.
Making the franchise logic the de facto standard of the business also influences the expectations of investors and business partners, making it harder to justify the production of products with limited franchise potential. For example, Disney had to face criticism from financial analysts and retailers when it released Pixar’s Up movie—which not only lacks cars, but any kind of “merchandizable” characters (see Barnes 2009).
- 53.
You can find the original ending of the film on some DVD/Blu-ray versions and also on YouTube (e.g., https://goo.gl/Yym7YV at the time of writing).
- 54.
The $4 million is the result of the following equation: 217.000 units × $20 (average retail price per unit) × 0.6 (average studio share of retail price)/0.65 (to correct for the incomplete data we got from Nielsen, which misses, for example, the sales from Walmart stores).
- 55.
More specifically, we transformed each weekly position of a book on the list into a “point score,” and then added up the points for each book over time. We calculated one score for the period after the film adaptation was released and another for the period before the film was released (in fact, before the advertising for the movie started). When doing this, we accounted for the non-linear distribution of attention that the ranks of such bestseller lists get from consumers by using an exponential transformation approach which ensures that the highest ranks get disproportionally higher point scores than do lower ranks.
- 56.
An example for this lack of a long-term vision is that whereas the Predator 2 movie indeed contains a reference to the Alien brand (an Alien skull is present in the trophy case on board the predator ship), that scene was not strategically chosen. Instead, it was the result of an inside joke and reference to the original Aliens vs. Predator comic (which had been released the year before) by two special effects artists who had also worked on the first Alien movie (Xenopedia 2017). Similarly, the most recent addition to the franchise, a new film trilogy by Ridley Scott, the creator of the initial Alien film, resulted not from any studio plan, but from Mr. Scott’s vision, and there were even parallel plans for other Alien movies circulating.
- 57.
Spider-Man 3 and Ghost Rider were among those screen adaptations that were relatively successful in theaters, but received little love from audiences and critics; the films have Metascores of 59 (out of 100) and 35, respectively, and IMDb user ratings of 6.2 (out of 10) and 5.2. Among the films based on Marvel characters that were both disliked and considered commercial failures were the Fantastic Four sequel Rise of the Silver Surfer (with a Metascore of 45, an IMDb score of 5.6, and global revenues of just $289 million, at a $130 million production budget), Elektra (Metascore = 34, IMDb = 4.8, global revenues = $56 million), and The Punisher (Metascore = 33, IMDb = 6.5, box office = $54 million).
- 58.
- 59.
Even Marvel favorite Spider-Man made his first appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in this film, having been rescued from an exile imposed by licensing deals that started in 1985. The rights for the Spider-Man character are still owned by Sony, but Sony and Marvel figured out mutually beneficial ways to cooperate. For details of the deal between the two firms, see Chitwood (2017).
- 60.
For a more general discussion of the potential conflict of managing franchises and relationships with creative talent, see the section on the state of the entertainment industry in the integrated marketing chapter.
- 61.
Readers with a particular interest in this topic might also enjoy learning about a similar approach for the valuation of individual book adaptations we developed in Knapp et al. (2014), our work about the monetary valuation of individual stars for specific movie projects (see Hennig-Thurau et al. 2014), and about the monetary valuation of the international TV rights for individual movies, as illustrated in Hennig-Thurau et al. (2013).
- 62.
See also our introductory quote in the book’s section on the financial impact of stars which describes a similar occurence for Stephen King’s book Thinner.
- 63.
For example, when we calculate the value of a Spider-Man sequel without the participation of the original film’s star Tobey Maguire , we arrive at 50% lower revenues and, consequently, a negative brand extension value—in other words, making an otherwise similar film without the Spider-Man brand would have made more sense economically. When Sony made the first Spider-Man sequel without Mr. Maguire (i.e., The Amazing Spider-Man) , the film sold about 34 million tickets in North America, compared to about 60 million for Spider-Man 2 —despite having consumed $30 million higher production costs. When asked by the team of The Guardian to demonstrate the approach’s validity, we also used our equations to predict the success of New Moon, a sequel to Twilight, prior to the film’s release. The model suggested North American revenues of $267 million, or just 10% less than what the film actually generated—and $69 more than the model predicted for an unbranded “twin” movie (see Allen 2009).
References
Addis, M., & Holbrook, M. B. (2010). Consumers’ identification and beyond: Attraction, reverence, and escapism in the evaluation of films. Psychology & Marketing, 27, 821–845.
Adler, M. (1985). Stardom and talent. American Economic Review, 75, 208–212.
AFI (2008). AFI’S 10 Top 10. American Film Institute, https://goo.gl/C6t7Zw.
Akdeniz, B. M., & Talay, M. B. (2013). Cultural variations in the use of marketing signals: A multilevel analysis of the motion picture industry. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 41, 601–624.
Albert, S. (1998). Movie stars and the distribution of financially successful films in the motion picture industry. Journal of Cultural Economics, 22, 249–270.
Allen, A. S. (2012). Has Hollywood lost its way? Short of the Week, January 5, https://goo.gl/6fnnj3.
Allen, K. (2009). Mathematicians find the formula for a hit film sequel. The Guardian, November 8, https://goo.gl/sM9npB.
Alter, A. (2015). Popular TV series and movies maintain relevance as novels. The New York Times, January 4, https://goo.gl/GKjZaj.
Andreeva, N. (2017). ‘Lord of the Rings’ TV series shopped with huge rights payment attached, November 3, https://goo.gl/jY1T8h.
Asai, S. (2008). Factors affecting hits in Japanese popular music. Journal of Media Economics, 21, 97–113.
Austin, B. A. (1989). Immediate seating: A look at movie audiences. California: Wadsworth Pub. Co.
Balachander, S., & Ghose, S. (2003). Reciprocal spillover effects: A strategic benefit of brand extensions. Journal of Marketing, 67, 4–13.
Barnes, B. (2009). Pixar’s art leaves profit watchers edgy. The New York Times, April 5, https://goo.gl/jqLKSb.
Barnes, B. (2017). ‘Beauty and the Beast’: Disney’s $300 million gamble. The New York Times, March 8, https://goo.gl/LnhPYz.
Basuroy, S., & Chatterjee, S. (2008). Fast and frequent: Investigating box office revenues of motion picture sequels. Journal of Business Research, 61, 798–803.
Basuroy, S., Chatterjee, S., & Abraham Ravid, S. (2003). How critical are critical reviews? The box office effects of film critics, star power, and budgets. Journal of Marketing, 67, 103–117.
Basuroy, S., Desai, K. K., & Talukdar, D. (2006). An empirical investigation of signaling in the motion picture industry. Journal of Marketing Research, 43, 287–295.
Berg, M. (2015). Everything you need to know about the Hollywood pay gap. Forbes, November 12, https://goo.gl/5hnqC1.
Bernardin, M. (2016). Marvel, ‘Star Wars,’ ‘Harry Potter’ and more: Why the movie star no longer shines as bright as the franchise. Los Angeles Times, June 17, https://goo.gl/q63rWC.
Bhattacharjee, S., Gopal, R. D., Lertwachara, K., Marsden, J. R., & Telang, R. (2007). The effect of digital sharing technologies on music markets: A survival analysis of albums on ranking charts. Management Science, 53, 1359–1374.
Bohnenkamp, B., Knapp, A.-K., Hennig-Thurau, T., & Schauerte, R. (2015). When does it make sense to do it again? An empirical investigation of contingency factors of movie remakes. Journal of Cultural Economics, 39, 15–31.
Bramesco, C. (2016). Where did ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’ go wrong? Rolling Stone, May 31, https://goo.gl/fCT4uu.
Brands, H. W. (2016). Reagan: The life. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
Busch, A., & D’Alessandro, A. (2016). ‘Star Trek Beyond’ launches to $59M; ‘Lights Out’ electrifies; ‘Ice Age’ tepid; ‘Ghostbusters’ no Cinderella story—box office final. Deadline, July 25, https://goo.gl/XyFPHm.
Caulfield, K., Comer, M. T., Concepcion, M., Letkemann, J., Lipshutz, J., Mapes, J., & Trust, G. (2011). The 40 biggest duets of all time. Billboard, February 14, https://goo.gl/BgpRtg.
Chitwood, A. (2017). Marvel and Sony ‘Spider-Man’ rights explained: What’s MCU and what’s not? Collider, July 3, https://goo.gl/v6ngWh.
Chung, K. H., & Cox, R. A. K. (1994). A stochastic model of superstardom: An application of the Yule distribution. Review of Economics and Statistics, 76, 771–775.
Clement, M., Steven, W., & Fischer, M. (2014). Empirical generalization of demand and supply dynamics for movies. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 31, 207–223.
Conterio, M. (2015). May the farce be with you: The Star Wars Holiday Special they want us to forget. The Guardian, December 1, https://goo.gl/XtgJzf.
Cox, J. (2013). What makes a blockbuster video game? An empirical analysis of US sales data. Managerial And Decision Economics, 35, 189–198.
D’Alessandro, A. (2016). ‘Apocalypse’ & ‘Alice’ take a dive on saturday as memorial day b.o. bloodbath continues—late night update. Deadline, May 31, https://goo.gl/6qHmhj.
D’Alessandro, A. (2017). What’s the secret to Marvel’s b.o. superpowers? A look inside the ‘Guardians Vol. 2’ superhero hit house. Deadline, May 7, https://goo.gl/8FqcJQ.
Demarais, K. (2009). The do’s and don’ts of self-titled record albums. Monkey Googles, https://goo.gl/ep7pe9.
Dhar, T., Sun, G., & Weinberg, C. (2012). The long-term box office performance of sequel movies. Marketing Letters, 23, 13–29.
Epstein, E. J. (2005). Concessions are for girlie men. Slate, May 9, https://goo.gl/UCe3JG.
Epstein, E. J. (2010). The Hollywood economist—The hidden financial reality behind the movies. Brooklyn: MelvilleHouse.
Fleming Jr., M. (2011). Cannes: Megan Ellison wins ‘Terminator’ rights auction. Deadline, May 13, https://goo.gl/nbA7Jq.
Fleming Jr., M. (2015). ‘Star Wars’ Legacy II: An architect of Hollywood’s greatest deal recalls how George Lucas won sequel rights. Deadline, December 18, https://goo.gl/s92zqd.
Fleming Jr., M. (2016). Kevin Feige on ‘Captain America: Civil War’ and all things Marvel—Deadline q&a. Deadline, May 6, https://goo.gl/pJo7BX.
Fleming Jr., M. (2017a). Sean Bailey on how Disney’s live-action division found its ‘Beauty and the Beast’ Mojo. Deadline Hollywood, March 21, https://goo.gl/4aLMxM.
Fleming Jr., M. (2017b). Quentin Tarantino hatches ‘Star Trek’ movie idea; Paramount, JJ Abrams to assemble writers room. Deadline, December 4, https://goo.gl/3StjEK.
Follows, S. (2016). How movies make money: $100 m+ Hollywood blockbusters, July 10, https://goo.gl/uYwnJe.
Forbes (2016a). The world’s highest-paid actors 2016. https://goo.gl/jMjswJ.
Forbes (2016b). The world’s highest-paid celebrities. https://goo.gl/9mVrKi.
Franck, E., & Nüesch, S. (2012). Talent and/or popularity: What does it take to be a superstar? Economic Inquiry, 50, 202–216.
Fritz, B., & Schwartzel, E. (2017). Hollywood’s misses are hits overseas. The Wall Street Journal, June 25, https://goo.gl/RFq956.
Giles, D. C. (2002). Parasocial interaction: A review of the literature and a model for future research. Media Psychology, 4, 279–305.
Giles, D. E. (2006). Superstardom in the US popular music industry revisited. Economics Letters, 92, 68–74.
Gill, A. (2012). Whitney Houston, the greatest voice of her generation. The Independent, February 16, https://goo.gl/gwPTXY.
Gong, J. J., Van der Stede, W. A., & Young, M. S. (2011). Real options in the motion picture industry: Evidence from film marketing and sequels. Contemporary Accounting Research, 28, 1438–1466.
Gonzales, U. (2015). ‘Captain America: Civil War’ screened for Sony execs for Spider-Man clearance. Heroic Hollywood, December 9, https://goo.gl/G7Wm6t.
Gopal, R. D., Bhattacharjee, S., & Lawrence Sanders, G. (2006). Do artists benefit from online music sharing? Journal of Business, 79, 1503–1533.
Graser, M. (2013). Ubisoft to make movies based on ‘Watch Dogs,’ ‘Far Cry,’ ‘Rabbids’ (exclusive). Variety, June 12, https://goo.gl/Ver9K7.
Hamlen Jr., W. A. (1991). Superstardom in popular music: Empirical evidence. Review of Economics and Statistics, 73, 729–733.
Hansen, U., Hennig-Thurau, T., & Schrader, U. (2001). Produktpolitik (3rd ed.). Stuttgart: Schäffer-Poeschel.
Hayes, D. (2017). ‘Logan’ director James Mangold: If Fox film fades out post-merger, “that would be sad to me”. Deadline, December 11, https://goo.gl/bHZ5Pb.
Heath, T. B., Chatterjee, S., Basuroy, S., Hennig-Thurau, T., & Kocher, B. (2015). Innovation sequences over iterated offerings: A relative innovation, comfort, and stimulation framework of consumer responses. Journal of Marketing, 79, 71–93.
Hennig-Thurau, T., & Dallwitz-Wegner, D. (2004). Zum Einfluss von Filmstars auf den Erfolg von Spielfilmen. MedienWirtschaft, 1, 157–170.
Hennig-Thurau, T., Houston, M. B., & Walsh, G. (2006). The differing roles of success drivers across sequential channels: An application to the motion picture industry. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 34, 559–575.
Hennig-Thurau, T., Houston, M. B., & Heitjans, T. (2009). Conceptualizing and measuring the monetary value of brand extensions: The case of motion pictures. Journal of Marketing, 73, 167–183.
Hennig-Thurau, T., Fuchs, S., & Houston, M. B. (2013). What’s a movie worth? Determining the monetary value of motion pictures’ TV rights. International Journal of Arts Management, 15, 4–20.
Hennig-Thurau, T., Völckner, F., Clement, M., & Hofmann, J. (2014). An ingredient branding approach to determine the financial value of stars: The case of motion pictures. Working Paper, SSRN.
Hofmann, K. H. (2013). Co-financing Hollywood film productions with outside investors: An economic analysis of principal agent relationships in the U.S. motion picture industry. Wiesbaden: Springer Gabler.
Hofmann, J., Clement, M., Völckner, F., & Hennig-Thurau, T. (2016). Empirical generalizations on the impact of stars on the economic success of movies. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 34, 442–461.
Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G. J., & Minkov, M. (2010). Cultures and organizations: Software for the mind (3rd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Horton, A., & McDougal, S. Y. (1998). Play it again, Sam: Retakes on remakes. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Horton, D., & Wohl, R. (1956). Mass communication and parasocial interaction: Observations on intimacy at a distance. Psychiatry, 19, 215–229.
Hunter III, S. D., Chinta, R., Smith, S., Shamim, A., & Bawazir, A. (2016). Moneyball for TV: A model for forecasting the audience of new dramatic television series. Studies in Media and Communication, 4, 13–22.
Jaafar, A. (2016). Studio Canal Chief Didier Lupfer lays out challenges & opportunities ahead for Europe’s major player—Cannes. Deadline Hollywood, May 23, https://goo.gl/q1htyu.
Joshi, A. (2015). Movie stars and the volatility of movie revenues. Journal of Media Economics, 28, 246–267.
Joshi, A., & Mao, H. (2012). Adapting to succeed? Leveraging the brand equity of best sellers to succeed at the box office. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 40, 558–571.
Kamphuis, J. (1991). Satisfaction with books: Some empirical findings. Poetics, 20, 471–485.
Keller, K. L. (1993). Conceptualizing, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity. Journal of Marketing, 57, 1–22.
Kelley, S. (2017). ‘Guardians 2’: Why James Gunn is now the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s biggest winner. Variety, May 7, https://goo.gl/Cyx8Av.
Knapp, A.-K., & Hennig-Thurau, T. (2014). Does 3D make sense for Hollywood? The economic implications of adding a third dimension to hedonic media products. Journal of Media Economics, 28, 100–118.
Knapp, A.-K., Hennig-Thurau, T., & Mathys, J. (2014). The importance of reciprocal spillover effects for the valuation of bestseller brands: Introducing and testing a contingency model. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 42, 205–221.
Kotler, P., & Gertner, D. (2002). Country as brand, product, and beyond: A place marketing and brand management perspective. Journal of Brand Management, 9, 249–261.
Landau, J. (1971). The Motown story. Rolling Stone, May 13, https://goo.gl/WpQ8cf.
Langfitt, F. (2015). How China’s censors influence Hollywood. NPR, May 18, https://goo.gl/fNtSM9.
Lee, J., Boatwright, P., & Kamakura, W. A. (2003). A Bayesian model for prelaunch sales forecasting of recorded music. Management Science, 49, 179–196.
Leemans, H., & Stokmans, M. (1991). Attributes used in choosing books. Poetics, 20, 487–505.
Levin, A. M., Levin, I. P., & Edward Heath, C. (1997). Movie stars and authors as brand names: measuring brand equity in experiential products. Advances in Consumer Research, 24, 175–181.
Lieberman, D. (2015). Why is Disney’s stock price falling as ‘Star Wars’ breaks box office records? Deadline, December 18, https://goo.gl/R9X7Vn.
Lindner, A. M., Lindquist, M., & Arnold, J. (2015). Million Dollar Maybe? The effect of female presence in movies on box office returns. Sociological Inquiry, 85, 1–22.
Liptak, A. (2017). Why Hollywood is turning to books for its biggest productions. The Verge, January 26, https://goo.gl/fBdN6b.
Liu, A., Mazumdar, T., & Li, B. (2014). Counterfactual decomposition of movie star effects. Management Science, 61, 1704–1721.
Lowrey, T. M., Shrum, L. J., & Dubitsky, T. M. (2003). The relation between brand-name linguistic characteristics and brand-name memory. Journal of Advertising, 32, 7–17.
Luo, L., Chen, X. (Jack), Han, J., & Whan Park, C. (2010). Dilution and enhancement of celebrity brands through sequential movie releases. Journal of Marketing Research, 47, 1114–1128.
Marchand, A. (2016). The power of an installed base to combat lifecycle decline: The case of video games. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 33, 140–154.
Masters, K. (2016). Marvel Studios’ origin secrets revealed by mysterious founder: History was “Rewritten”. The Hollywood Reporter, May 5, https://goo.gl/MT816d.
Mathys, J., Burmester, A. B., & Clement, M. (2015). What drives the market popularity of celebrities? A longitudinal analysis of consumer interest in film stars. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 33, 428–448.
Mendelson, S. (2013). Trailer talk: ‘Robocop’ and the problem with remakes. Forbes, November 7, https://goo.gl/M96n9z.
Minzesheimer, B. (2004). 10 years of best sellers: How the landscape has changed. USA Today, March 10, https://goo.gl/1L7UMz.
Nevins, J. (2011). A brief history of the crossover. Gizmodo, August 23, https://goo.gl/4gzzeB.
Oehmke, P., & Beier, L. (2011). All der Mist passiert wirklich. Der Spiegel, January 3, https://goo.gl/HtLkQv.
Orden, E., & Kung, M. (2012). Lions Gate hungers for a franchise. The Wall Street Journal, February 21, https://goo.gl/nhguVP.
Pähler vor der Holte, N., Gless, F., Knapp, A., Riehl, U., & Hennig-Thurau, T. (2016). What’s in a name? Analyzing the influence of brand names on entertainment product success. In Proceedings of the 44th Academy of Marketing Science Annual Conference (Vol. 1441). Orlando: Academy of Marketing Science.
Patterson, J. (2008). It’s in the name. The Guardian, April 5, https://goo.gl/N2tdNL.
Peden, L. D. (1993). The possessive is nine-tenths of the title. The New York Times, November 28, https://goo.gl/Lvgk2C.
Pfeiffer, L. (2015). Movie classics: The American westerns of Clint Eastwood. A Cinema Retro special edition magazine. Cinema Retro, 2015.
Philips, T. (2015). Why Destiny ditched Peter Dinklage. Eurogamer.net, November 8, https://goo.gl/RsRBab.
QPMedia (2013). QP money making stars all years. https://goo.gl/U9ube2.
Ravid, S. A. (1999). Information, blockbusters, and stars: A study of the film industry. The Journal of Business, 72, 463–492.
Rohbemed, N. (2015). For Disney, biggest payday on Star Wars won’t be at the box office. Forbes, December 16, https://goo.gl/j4gJYc.
Rosen, S. (1981). The economics of superstars. American Economic Review, 71, 845–858.
Rubin, A. M., & Step, M. M. (2000). Impact of motivation, attraction, and parasocial interaction on talk radio listening. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 44, 635–654.
Rubin, A. M., Perse, E. M., & Powell, R. A. (1985). Loneliness, parasocial interaction, and local television news viewing. Human Communication Research, 12, 155–180. Winter.
Sattler, H. (1999). Markenstrategien für neue Produkte. In F.-R. Esch (Ed.), Moderne Markenführung (pp. 337–355). Wiesbaden: Gabler.
Sattler, H., & Völckner, F. (2013). Markenpolitik (3rd ed.). Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer.
Schiappa, E., Allen, M., & Gregg, P. B. (2007). Parasocial relationships and television: A meta-analysis of the effects. In R. W. Preiss, B. M. Gayle, N. Bureell, M. Allen, & J. Bryant (Eds.), Mass media effects research: Advances through meta-analysis (pp. 301–314). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Schmidt-Stölting, C., Blömeke, E., & Clement, M. (2011). Success drivers of fiction books: An empirical analysis of hardcover and paperback editions in Germany. Journal of Media Economics, 24, 24–47.
Schwartzel, E. (2016). Hollywood under pressure to put more chinese actors in the spotlight. The Wall Street Journal, September 19, https://goo.gl/BvqSWp.
seekingalpha.com (2014). The Walt Disney company’s management presents at Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference—transcript, September 10, https://goo.gl/HWBLUx.
Simon, C. J., & Sullivan, M. W. (1993). The measurement and determinants of brand equity: A financial approach. Marketing Science, 12, 28–52.
Smiley, J. (2016). Touch up your Shakespeare: Anne Tyler recasts ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ for our time. The New York Times, July 6, https://goo.gl/akj9km.
Smith, E. (2011). Disney’s ‘Cars 2’ a hit already—in stores. The Wall Street Journal, June 20, https://goo.gl/ag374V.
Sood, S., & Dréze, X. (2006). Brand extensions of experiential goods: Movie sequel evaluations. Journal of Consumer Research, 33, 352–360.
Spence, N. (2007). Steve Jobs directs Disney. Macworld, June 25, https://goo.gl/3RZetW.
Squire, J. E. (2006). Introduction. In J. E. Squire (Ed.), The movie business book (International 3rd ed., pp. 1–12). Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Stedman, A. (2014). Kevin Hart responds to Sony ‘Whore’ comment: ‘I Protect My Brand’. Variety, December 11, https://goo.gl/3bTLDv.
Stork, M. (2014). Assembling the Avengers: Reframing the superhero movie through Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. In J. N. Gilmore & M. Stork (Eds.), Superhero synergies: Comic book characters go digital (pp. 77–96). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Streib, L. (2009). Why James Patterson is worth $150 million. Forbes, September 9, https://goo.gl/n4Fzfq.
Suderman, P. (2016). Hollywood is stuck in a bubble of expanded movie universes. It’s time for it to pop. Vox, January 27, https://goo.gl/u8zAap.
Sugarman, J. (2011). The right and wrong ways to name a movie. Salon, February 11, https://goo.gl/7Bo7kb.
Swertlow, M. (2017). You’re reading this correctly: A Hunger Games theme park is coming. E! Online, August 15, https://goo.gl/PfTT56.
Taylor, C. (2015). ‘Look at the size of that thing!’: How Star Wars makes its billions. The Telegraph, May 4, https://goo.gl/Ghu8mu.
The Deadline Team (2013). Steven Soderbergh’s state of cinema talk. Deadline, April 30, https://goo.gl/3md7zK.
The Hollywood Reporter (2016). Hollywood’s 100 favorite movie quotes, February 24, https://goo.gl/aj1XuV.
Thomson, M. (2006). Human brands: Investigating antecedents to consumers’ strong attachments to celebrities. Journal of Marketing, 70, 104–119.
Trachtenberg, J. A. (2013). Rowling’s second adult novel flies off shelves. The Wall Street Journal, July 14, https://goo.gl/37iQcT.
Van der Stede, W. A. (2015). Hollywood studios appear to plan sequels before they produce the original movie, September 10, https://goo.gl/f6jCKa.
Vary, A. B. (2015). Joss Whedon’s astonishing, spine-tingling, soul-crushing Marvel adventure! Buzzfeed, April 21, https://goo.gl/Rma2u7.
Wallace, W. T., Seigerman, A., & Holbrook, M. B. (1993). The role of actors and actresses in the success of films: How much is a movie star worth? Journal of Cultural Economics, 17, 17–27.
Wirtz, B. W., Mermann, M., & Daier, P. (2016). Success factors of motion picture actors—An empirical analysis. Creative Industries Journal, 9, 162–180.
Wohlfeil, M., & Whelan, S. (2008). Confessions of a movie-fan: Introspection into a consumer’s experiential consumption of ‘Pride and Prejudice’. Proceedings of European ACR Conference, 137–143.
Wohlfeil, M., & Whelan, S. (2012). ‘Saved!’ by Jena Malone: An introspective study of a consumer’s fan relationship with a film actress. Journal of Business Research, 65, 511–519.
Wookieepedia (2017). List of comics. https://goo.gl/Ts5vZw.
Xenopedia (2017). Predator 2. https://goo.gl/atfCNR.
Yodasdatapad (2016). Star Wars book list, December 16, https://goo.gl/q8A6Ex.
Zhao, E. Y., Ishihara, M., & Loundsbury, M. (2013). Overcoming the illegitimacy discount: Cultural entrepreneurship in the US feature film industry. Organization Studies, 34, 1747–1776.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hennig-Thurau, T., Houston, M.B. (2019). Entertainment Product Decisions, Episode 3: Brands as Quality Signals. In: Entertainment Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89292-4_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89292-4_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-89290-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-89292-4
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)