Title

Adapting To Succeed? Leveraging The Brand Equity Of Best Sellers To Succeed At The Box Office

Keywords

Book adaptations; Box office revenue; Experiential brand extension; Motion picture industry

Abstract

Many movies are based on best-selling novels. While book adaptation is an often used strategy in the motion picture industry, it has received little academic attention. Using a multi-method approach, this research investigates the drivers behind the success of book-based movies. In Study 1, we analyze over 700 movies and find that book-based movies perform better at the box office on the opening weekend than non-book movies. However, this superior performance dissipates after the opening weekend. Further, the opening weekend performance of book-based movies is positively driven by book equity, book-movie similarity, and recency between the book's peak equity and movie release. After the opening weekend, many of these book-related variables cease to have an impact, and the effect of movie-related variables (e.g., reviews) increases. Because Study 1 documents that book-movie similarity positively impacts the movie's performance, contrary to prior findings that content similarity has negative or null impact on performance of a movie sequel, we undertake a second study to reconcile the discrepancy. Study 2 finds that content similarity results in satiation and therefore hampers the movie success for sequels; however, when a movie is adapted from a book, due to experiential modality change (i.e., from book format to film format rather than film to film), content similarity increases the movie's chance of success. © 2010 Academy of Marketing Science.

Publication Date

7-1-2012

Publication Title

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science

Volume

40

Issue

4

Number of Pages

558-571

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-010-0241-2

Socpus ID

84861234669 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/84861234669

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