CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
- Background of study
Movies have been a huge source of entertainment since the late 1880s. For over a hundred years the movie industry has been growing and it has never been as big as it is today. With Hollywood, Nollywood and Bollywood releasing a vast amount of movies every year, there are factors in play that influence the audiences to go and watch these movies. Three of them have been selected and will be the central focus of this paper.
The factors are; the cast of the movie, the movie trailer and the movie reviews. The cast of the movie refers to the actors and actresses that are involved in the movie. The movie trailer is a promotional video clip that summarizes or teases what the movie is about and when it will be released. The movie reviews (or aggregate score) are the critiques given by movie critics as to inform audiences and the general public whether the movie is worth seeing or not. Movie reviews are a fairly commonly used tool by consumers to understand if a movie is worth the price of admission (Pentheny, 2015). An aggregate score is given to the movie to quantify how good it is. The review rating scale can be from 1/100-100/100 or 1/5-5/5, etc.
This research aims to focus on which of these factors prompt AUN students to watch movies. Movie reviews have become very important today in cinema. Organizations such as Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic are a few of the well-known movie critic websites that rule the entertainment industry. The film industry is a billion dollar, global industry that heavily relies on advertisements known as “film trailers” to captivate an audience’s attention and promote movies (Jerrick, 2013). This can prompt viewers to go watch the movie. The cast of the movie also has a big effect on the audience. If the movie has big stars or famous actors or stars that are favorites of the viewer, the viewer will most likely want to watch the movie. These are the three factors that the research paper is going to be focused on. This project will show how these factors influence AUN undergraduate students when they make a choice to watch a movie.
- Statement of problem
There are many reasons why people watch movies. What this research paper aims to find out is why they choose to watch these movies. For this reason, three factors have been identified (cast, movie trailer and reviews). To further explain this phenomenon, these factors are among a plethora of reasons why consumers choose to watch movies. The actors and actresses that are cast in a movie may be enough to convince a consumer to watch a movie. If the actor happens to be a person that the audience like or feel attached to, then they have a reason to watch a movie. Movie trailers also show clips of the movie to get audiences to buy tickets to watch movies. If the trailer catches the moviegoer’s interest then it has done its job. If the individual goes to watch the movie then the trailer has fully fulfilled its purpose.
Movie reviews or ratings are a way of telling audiences how good a movie is and if said movie is worth watching. This seems to be a very popular way for consumers to decide whether they are going to watch a movie or not. Since reviews are given by movie critics who are well educated and have a vast knowledge of movies and cinema, the average moviegoer seems to be able to trust their opinions of a movie. Since movie critics are seen as people who are professionals at judging the quality of a movie, it is easy to see why people use their reviews as a reference before watching a movie. This research aims to show how these factors affect AUN students in making decisions to watch movies.
