The effects of eWOM volume and valence on product sales - an empirical examination of the movie industry

Abstract

The present research examines how quantitative and qualitative aspects - volume and valence - of eWOM on various social media platforms in the movie industry, along with other forms of marketing communications (e.g. advertising expenditure), predict box office and DVD sales for pre- and post-periods of movie releases. The analysis of aggregated big data from multiple sources - 65,665,859 social media postings from blogs, forums, news, and Twitter, Nielsen's ad expenditure data, and Rotten Tomatoes ratings for 170 movies-revealed that the explanatory power of the model for box office revenue and DVD sales mostly comes from the volume, rather than valence, of eWOM.