평론가가 박스 오피스(box office)에 미치는 영향에 관한 통합적 접근: 2006년～2008년 미국 영화산업을 중심으로

Uncertainty in the marketplace is one of the most prevalent phenomena in recent years. Different from perfect market assumption, the information of a specific product and its quality is scarce and rare in the actual market. Consumers generally have bounded time, bounded attention, and bounded resources and capabilities to search and gather full information,even if it is available. In essence they have difficulties in evaluating what they find because they are relatively short of expertise and generally have matters of trust and skepticism about what firms offer. Trying to avoid possible loss and failure after entering into a transaction due to a lack of quality information, consumers look for other sources of information aside from product producers: independent information providers, or, critics. Critics can be defined as actors who are independent of producers, but have enough expertise to evaluate product quality rather than general consumers, and can transmit the information to the rest of audience to exert influence in the selection process. Researchers have been interested in the role and impact of critics in various industries where has been known of high uncertainty and ambiguity. Our study is designed to provide an explanation for the gap of prior research on the association between the behavior of critics and consumers in the actual market. Building on signalling theory and evidence in the literatures on organization and marketing, we consider the concept of multiple critics and the relative impacts of them to general consumers. Additionally,we explore the interaction effects of budget and star power in the film industry. Our sample of 744 films in the U.S. film industry for the period of 2006 to 2008 provides evidence that multiple critics have different effects on the receptivity of consumers by types. The hypotheses on budget and star power are partially supported.