Linking Advertising to Box Office Performance of New Film Releases: A Marketing Planning Model

A new model approach is developed to evaluate the market performance of new film releases as a function of advertising. The proposed model sequentially links planned advertising expenditures for a new film introduction to awareness, intention to see the film as well as projected ticket sales at the box office. This paper illustrates how the model may be used by a movie studio to evaluate alternative film introduction strategies based on proposed allocations of advertising expenditures as well as theater distribution intensities over a film's life cycle.