Rotten Tomatoes and Chill? Mras and Their Impact on Decision-Making

Allman & Medeiros, Rotten Tomatoes and Chill? MRAs and Their Impact on Decision-making

Rotten Tomatoes and Chill? MRAs and Their Impact on Decision-Making

Sharon Allman and Jenny Lee-De Medeiros

Abstract :

The purpose of this research was to examine whether young adults (aged 18-32) look at user- and/or critic-generated movie review aggregates (MRAs) to decide which film to watch, or whether other factors impact their decision-making. The literature on this topic most notably shows a correlation between highly rated movies and better box office results, a preference for MRAs, and potential market benefits of MRAs. This research, which focused on the North American context, contained both quantitative and qualitative methods in the form of an online survey, focus groups, and key informant interviews. The results indicate that MRAs are not the preferred method to decide what movie to watch, and instead factors such as family or friends’ recommendations and marketing decisions of the film most affect young adults’ decisions about which films to watch.

Keywords: movie review aggregate, MRA, movies, ratings, rating metric, scoring system

DOI 10.33137/ijournal.v6i1.35269

iJournal, Vol 6, No. 1, 1 Allman & Medeiros, Rotten Tomatoes and Chill? MRAs and Their Impact on Decision-making Introductory Statement of Significance

Rotten Tomatoes is a movie review aggregate (MRA) available online that assigns a score to a movie based on critic and/or user reviews. According to Alexa, a web traffic estimator, it is the 143rd most popular website in Canada, while IMDB, a website with user-generated reviews, is 26th most popular (Alexa, n.d.). Media corporations emphasize the impact of the scores which websites like Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB assign to new film releases. In fact, Fandango, a company that sells movie tickets in the U.S., purchased Rotten Tomatoes, and now displays these scores beside the movie as consumers buy tickets online. This suggests an increased market interest in MRAs and the commercial impact they have on box office results.V arious researchers have found a correlation between positive critic reviews and higher box office grossing, but very few have looked directly at the relationship between the act of visiting MRAs and the decision to see a movie (Terry et al., 2004; Hennig-Thurau et al, 2012). This research aims to fill this gap in the literature.

Aims and Objectives

Filling this gap in the literature will help explore why there seems to be a commercial benefit for movies that have high reviews. This is an area that is of growing interest to movie companies and executives and can have bigger implications for box office performance on movies and firm valuation. Specifically, we hope to answer the following questions:

Do people trust and use MRAs?

What is considered a good score for an MRA? Does a “good score” affect behaviour?

What factors drive people to watch a movie, either in theaters or at home?

Literature Review

Currently the literature assessing the use of MRAs by North Americans falls into three main categories: preferences for movie aggregates, box office performance based on critics’ movie reviews, and the perceived quality of movie reviews. iJournal, Vol 6, No. 1, 2 Allman & Medeiros, Rotten Tomatoes and Chill? MRAs and Their Impact on Decision-making

Preferences for Movie Aggregates

The preference for MRAs has been examined by Doguel and Xiaoming (2016), who found that U.S. participants demonstrated a preference for aggregate user information, favouring movies with high star ratings, compared to the movies with positive user reviews favoured by Singapor- ean participants. This research suggests that MRAs are the preferred method for Americans to look at reviews for movies (Doguel & Xiaoming, 2016). Yep et al. chose to compare review sites, social media, personal blogs, and instant messaging sites to discover the preferred electronic word of mouth (E-WOM) platform for movie reviews. They found that review sites were the preferred E-WOM for movies, specifically Rotten Tomatoes (Yep et al., 2014).

Box Office Performance Based on Critics Movie Reviews

Critics have had a long-standing role in the success of films on release through box office performance. Terry et al. examined different factors that affect box office performance of movies and found that a critics’ approval rating of at least 40%, and the number of Academy Awards a film received both correlated with box office success. A 10% increase in critic approval can add approximately 7.8 million in additional revenue for a movie, indicating that positive critics’ reviews have a positive impact on viewer decision-making (Terry et al., 2004). Similarly, Hen- nig-Thurau et al. (2012) found that a high number of positive critics’ reviews has a notable impact on long-term film success, especially for comedies and dramas (2012).

Movie Reviews and Their Perceived Quality

Since movie reviews are often user-generated, the perceived quality of movie reviews is an important factor to consider, and one which has been studied by Koh et al. They examined three markets – China, Singapore, and the U.S. – and the differences between the online average user reviews and the perceived views from participants from the three markets, and found that reviews from the U.S. were subjected to higher rates of under-reporting bias, whereby people with stron- ger opinions were more likely to leave reviews than people with more moderate opinions (Koh et al., 2010). This skews the results to extreme scores compared to the viewers’ total perceived qual- iJournal, Vol 6, No. 1, 3 Allman & Medeiros, Rotten Tomatoes and Chill? MRAs and Their Impact on Decision-making ity of the film. Ullah et al. (2015) approached the presence of such biases in user reviews using sentiment analysis; they examined the impact of reviews’ emotional sentiments on their helpfulness to the readers, using a variety of reviews from IMDB. They found that reviews with positive emotions were more likely to be perceived as helpful while reviews with negative emotions were less likely to be perceived as helpful (Ullah et al., 2015).

Chintagunta et al., 2010 furthered this discussion by investigating the effects of online user reviews on movies’ box office performance. They focused on user-generated film review site Yahoo! Movies, and argued that these word of mouth reviews have a large impact on viewer decision-making (Chintagunta et al., 2010). Rather than the quantity of reviews on a film, the authors found that the valence of the reviews has a greater impact, corroborating Ullah et al. (2015)’s findings. Chintagunta et al., 2010 also accounted for pre-release advertisement of a film as a con- founding variable and used this as a contrast to the impact of the film reviews (2010). It is inter- esting to note that in all three of these studies, the reviews which had a strong influence on viewer decision-making were user-generated.

Other Factors Affecting Movie Sales

Moretti chose to focus on social learning and found that movies with better-than-expect- ed appeal in the first week of release tend to do better in their second week as a result of positive word of mouth reviews. This impact is directly proportional to the size of an audience’s social networks and could account for up to 32% of sales of a film with positive surprise (Moretti, 2010).

The existing literature on movie reviews and MRAs clearly indicates that there are strong correlations between positive movie reviews, but there is little literature that directly examines whether North American – specifically Canadian – consumers rely on these movie reviews to make their movie watching decisions. Some studies have indicated that there is a correlation for other types of online reviews and consumer behaviours, but very little research has been done on MRAs, despite the commercial benefits of this research. Our own study attempts to fill the void between studies of the impact of user-generated reviews and the professional reviews on a site like Rotten Tomatoes. iJournal, Vol 6, No. 1, 4 Allman & Medeiros, Rotten Tomatoes and Chill? MRAs and Their Impact on Decision-making Research Design

Methods

This study employed both qualitative and quantitative research methods as a mixed-methods approach. Our quantitative tool was an online survey, completed by 292 participants. This survey also had some qualitative aspects, as participants could submit their own open-ended responses. Our primary qualitative tools were two focus groups conducted concurrently, as well as two key informant interviews conducted concurrently over email.

Tools/Instruments

Online Survey: An online survey was deployed using Q-fi, an online survey tool. Respondents were asked questions about their movie going behaviours, their views on MRAs, and how they make movie-watching decisions. Most of the questions were ranking or 5-point Likert-scale questions.

Focus Groups: Two focus groups with five participants each were conducted concurrently using a semi-structured moderators’ guide. Participants were chosen through convenience sampling, where recruiting posts were made on the researchers’ personal Facebook accounts. Participants were asked about their movie-going habits and how they make decisions on what movies to see, and they were given examples of movie scores from Rotten Tomatoes and asked to give their im- pressions of them.

Online Key Informant Interviews: Two email interviews were conducted, one with a participant who loved MRAs and one with a participant who disliked them. These participants were sourced from the researchers’ personal networks. The interviews were conducted in two parts: the questions, specific to each participant, were emailed to them in a Word document which they were to fill out and email back to the researchers; and then the researchers returned the document to the participant with additional follow up questions, which the participants answered and sent back to the researchers.

iJournal, Vol 6, No. 1, 5 Allman & Medeiros, Rotten Tomatoes and Chill? MRAs and Their Impact on Decision-making

Limitations

To triangulate within this study, three different methods of data collection were used. These methods were combined to identify major themes within the data. Our survey was completed by 292 people and there was a total of 12 participants within both of our qualitative data collection techniques.

Methodological Limitations

We chose to exclude individuals who were younger than 18 years old and did not want to study people older than 32 years old as we felt that they were outside our target population of “millennials”. We excluded people who were not residing in Ontario at the time of our study to reduce the variation in opinions based on differing geography. We used the same set of inclusion and exclusion criteria for the survey, interview, and focus group participants.

Study Tool Limitations

Each of our analysis tools came with their own set of limitations. The survey was exclu- sively administered online, deployed using the online survey software Q-fi over Canadian servers. This meant that only individuals who could access and use the internet on an electronic device were able to complete the survey. Some of those who attempted to complete the survey on their smartphones had issues accessing the survey on Q-fi and required additional instruction to open it in a different web browser or instead complete it on their computer.

Regarding the qualitative methods, the focus groups were both held on Humber College Lakeshore Campus and were comprised of students. These focus groups ran concurrently and the age distribution clustered around the bottom and middle of our intended range. The key informant interviewees were both female and close in age (residing closer to the lower end of our age range). The key informant interviews were conducted over email, where the participants answered all the questions in succession, leaving less opportunity for the interviewer to probe the respondents.1

1 Note: all data collection was performed prior to February 2020 and was therefore collected prior to COVID-19 related shutdowns. COVID-19 was not considered as a factor in any of the data collection or analyses. iJournal, Vol 6, No. 1, 6 Allman & Medeiros, Rotten Tomatoes and Chill? MRAs and Their Impact on Decision-making

Quantitative Findings

For our analysis, we decided to look at three factors that we believed were most important in relation to people using MRAs. The three variables we looked at were: what type of MRA our participants trusted the most; how much they trusted different types of aggregates; how often they go to a theater; and if they look at an MRA before, during, or after a movie. These variables were chosen to give us an understanding of who engages with MRAs and why. Specifically, we looked at the relationship between: what type of MRA participants trusted and what factors people use to decide on which movie to watch a home and at the theater; how often people go to a theater and if they have gone to see a movie because of a certain Rotten Tomato score; when they look at an MRA and if that affects their impression of a movie, and if they would see the movie based on a score on Rotten Tomatoes; and if trusting critic or user score MRAs affect their impression of a movie based on a score on Rotten Tomatoes. An alpha level of 0.05 was used for all analyses.

Trust and Behaviour

Finding 1: A Chi-Squared test was run between what type of MRA participants trusted and what factors people used to decide on which movie to watch at the theater. The test found that the only time the type of aggregate mattered was when it came to people who used either critic MRAs or professional critic reviews when deciding which movie to watch in theaters. The relation between these variables was significant: (8, N = 212) = 16.61, p < 0.05.This seems to indicate that people who use critic aggregates and trust critics value professional MRAs when making a decision, however this may not apply to the population as a whole.

Finding 2: A similar Chi-Squared test was run between what type of MRA participants trusted and what factors people used to decide on which movie to watch at home. The test found that the same held true in both cases and the only time the type of aggregate mattered was when it came to people who used either critic MRAs or professional critic reviews for deciding which movie to watch at home: (8, N = 212) = 17.72, p < 0.05. This, again, seems to indicate that people who use critic aggregates and trust critics value professional MRAs when making a decision, but this does not apply to the population as a whole. iJournal, Vol 6, No. 1, 7 Allman & Medeiros, Rotten Tomatoes and Chill? MRAs and Their Impact on Decision-making

Trust and Impression

Finding 3: In keeping with the idea of trust in MRAs, a Chi-Squared test was run with the variable “Do you trust professional MRAs?” to find if there was a statistically significant relationship between Rotten Tomatoes scores and subjects’ impression of a movie. We found that there was a relationship, but only if the movie either had a really low score (0-19 or 20-39) or a really high score (80-100): (16, N = 223) = 9.94, p < 0.05. When this same test was run with the “Do you trust user generated MRAs?” variable and how Rotten Tomatoes scores affect their impression of the movie, we found that no statistically significant relationship existed at any level: (16, N = 223) = 36.23, p > 0.05. This seems to indicate the same conclusion as before, that professional MRAs only have an effect if people trust them.

When Used and Impression and Behaviour

Finding 4: A Chi-Squared test was run to see if the point in time that subjects looked at an MRA affected their impression of the movie. There was only a significant relationship between these variables if the movie had a really low score of 0-19: (8, N = 223) = 32.18, p < 0.05. This seems to indicate that the only time a score affects people’s perception of the film is if the general consen- sus is negative.

Finding 5: A Chi-Squared test was run to see if the point in time that subjects looked at an MRA affected their decision to see the movie based on its score. There was only a significant relationship between these variables if the movie had a really high score of 80-100: (8, N = 223) = 28.45, p < 0.05. This seems to indicate that unless a movie has a really high score, audiences don’t see much value in the score, and it is not a part of their decision-making process.

How Often and Behaviour

Finding 6: A Chi-Squared test was run between how often a person saw a movie in theater and how likely they were to go watch a movie based on a certain score on Rotten Tomatoes. It was found that the only significant relationship was when a movie had a really high score on Rotten Tomatoes: (8, N = 223) = 14.33, p < 0.05. This could indicate that people feel it necessary to en- iJournal, Vol 6, No. 1, 8 Allman & Medeiros, Rotten Tomatoes and Chill? MRAs and Their Impact on Decision-making sure the movie they are going to see is worth the visit to the theater.

Bias

Audience: Two instances of types of audience bias were coded within the focus groups. Audi- ence bias was not coded within the interviews. Participants explained that audiences can be biased in terms of their movie-watching preferences as many people watch films because of personal preference, not due to any universally shared judgement that a movie is good or bad. Another participant explained that the audience rating is about the moviegoer’s experience as a whole, including their pre-existing preference for the movie franchise, for example. In summary, participants expressed that audiences generally do not tend to conceptualize films in terms of their objective mechanical and artistic strengths and instead watch movies based on casual preferences.

Critics: Three instances of critic biases were coded within the focus groups. Only participant 2 of the interviews mentioned critic bias once. Participant 2 of the interviews was interviewed because she did not trust nor like to use MRAs, therefore her distrust of critics is in line with her other beliefs. Each mention of critic bias within the focus groups outlined that participants believed that critics did not rate horror movies fairly, as horror movies are not as technically nuanced in the ways that other genres may be, leading to professional critic bias.

Disconnect Between Behaviours and Beliefs

Four instances of participants having a disconnect between their behaviours and beliefs were coded within the focus groups. The focus group participants displayed a disconnect between their behaviours and beliefs: they believed that MRAs are important and popular, yet neither they iJournal, Vol 6, No. 1, 9 Allman & Medeiros, Rotten Tomatoes and Chill? MRAs and Their Impact on Decision-making nor most of their family or friends generally used them. One instance of a disconnect between behaviours and beliefs was coded within participant 1’s interview. The disconnect interview participant 1 referred to was that if a movie had a bad score, people would still avoid seeing it, even if it was a good film in other ways. This refers to the idea that ratings based on personal preferences may impact the applicability of a score to its artistic or technical quality.

Distrust of the Unknown

Buying Reviews: The first sub- code within the broader code of distrust of the unknown is the idea that production or advertising companies buy positive reviews. Neither interview participant mentioned this concept, but it was coded once within the focus groups. In that instance, the participant expressed that they had heard that positive reviews were sometimes purchased, despite the film generally being seen as less than average in quality. There is no confirmed evidence of this occurring, however, it being against the terms of use of Rotten Tomatoes.

Distrust of Average User: Distrust of the average user was coded once within the focus groups and twice within the interviews. Within the focus groups, one of the participants expressed that the average person is not very intelligent, referring then to the potentially low quality of a user review. Both interview participants mentioned their distrust of the average user. Participant 1 expressed that they are distrustful of audience scores because users are allowed to rate a film without having even seen it. Participant 2 expressed a similar sentiment, but also that before a blockbuster film is released, various reviews can already be seen of the film for arbitrary reasons, unrelated to the iJournal, Vol 6, No. 1, 10 Allman & Medeiros, Rotten Tomatoes and Chill? MRAs and Their Impact on Decision-making actual film.

Distrust of Critics: Distrust of critics was coded three times within the focus groups and eight times within the interviews. Within the focus groups, one participant expressed that they did not trust Rotten Tomatoes scores. Even though they are critic aggregates, the participant expressed that critics are too pretentious, which may mean that the ways in which this participant perceives the scores being awarded does not align with their ideals of a good movie. Another participant mentioned again that critics tend to give horror films bad reviews, and therefore it is hard to trust critic opinions. A third participant was critical of the perceived demographics of critics, being that critics are seen as middle-aged white men.

Within the interviews, seven references to distrust of critics were coded within the interview of participant 2, who did not like Rotten Tomatoes. The concerns were mainly composed of having a lack of rubric or criteria for the way that critics score movies. The participant expressed that they didn’t feel like they knew what critics were scoring movies against. They mentioned that there is not a diverse critic range. Within participant 1’s interview, they expressed that they sometimes takes issue with critics, as they sometimes make unfair judgements about the quality of the film, despite their expert status.

Fear of Spoilers

Critics: Fear of spoilers from critics was coded twice within the interviews (once each) and not coded within the focus groups. Participant 1 expressed that they do not like how often the movie is ruined after a critic gives too many details about the movie and its plot. Participant 2 said that they found reading critic reviews tedious, especially because they run the extreme risk of spoilers.

Friends and Family

Group Activity: The choice of certain movies in order to complete a group activity was coded twice within the focus groups and was not coded within the interviews. Both focus group participants expressed that they go to the movies because friends are going out. They have similar tastes as their friends and therefore trust their opinions of what movies to watch. iJournal, Vol 6, No. 1, 11 Allman & Medeiros, Rotten Tomatoes and Chill? MRAs and Their Impact on Decision-making

Personalized

The idea that friends and family can produce more personalized movie reviews was coded thrice within the focus groups and once within the interviews. Within the focus groups, participants expressed that they found that reviews from friends and family were more personalized, as they had similar taste and were able to engage in conversation about movies.

Trust Friends

Trusting friends was coded four times within the focus groups and once within the interviews. Focus group participants expressed that they understand their friends and therefore understand what is driving their opinions and views about movies. Participant 1 of the interviews found that they trust peers sometimes more than movie aggregates because their peers understand their individual movie preferences and therefore would not recommend a movie the participant would not enjoy.

Marketing Decision

Actor: A film’s actors being a draw for participants was coded ten times within the focus groups and was not coded within the interviews. Participants explained that they see films because of certain actors, with one person claiming they do not see movies with a certain actor in them because of their preference against them. Participants mentioned iJournal, Vol 6, No. 1, 12 Allman & Medeiros, Rotten Tomatoes and Chill? MRAs and Their Impact on Decision-making that they would be drawn to see particular movies because they had female casts.

Plot: Seeing a movie because of its plot was coded seven times within the focus groups and once within the interviews. Within the focus groups, participants claimed that they would see a movie if they had some information on the plot or story line, such as when a film is based on a previous movie or is part of a movie franchise. Nostalgia is another factor, as one participant mentioned that they would go see certain movies within a franchise or remakes of movies because they were films that they grew up with, such as Beauty and the Beast or Toy Story.

Trailer: A film’s trailer was coded three times within the focus groups and once within the interview as a reason to see a movie. The focus group participants cited the movie’s trailer as a major factor. One focus group participant goes to the movies very often and therefore uses the trailers to judge quickly what movie to see. Participant 2 of the interviews connected trailers to Rotten To- matoes scores, in that they believed these scores were added to advertise the movie if the company believed the film’s plot was not enough of a draw.

What’s New

Watching movies because they are new releases was coded twice within the focus group and thrice within the interviews. One focus group participant chose movies based on recent releases. Another participant expressed that they only used Rotten Tomatoes to see the top ten movies within certain categories. Interview participant 1 expressed similar opinions, as they too looked at new releases within generated lists on websites in order to select movies to watch.

Reviews

Scores from Aggregates: When participants were asked about using professional aggregate scores in order to decide to see a movie or not, six references were coded within the focus groups, while four references were coded within the interviews. Participants made varying use of aggregate scores, from looking in-depth at the critic scores to deciding to see a movie or its trailer based on the scores. Interview participant 2 explained that they may use the aggregated scores to make general decisions about watching a movie. iJournal, Vol 6, No. 1, 13 Allman & Medeiros, Rotten Tomatoes and Chill? MRAs and Their Impact on Decision-making

Scores from Audience: There was only one instance of a focus group participant mentioning that they found audience scores more accurate. There were no instances of audience score being a factor within the interviews.

Final Analysis

Trust of MRAs

After analyzing all the data collected, we discovered that MRAs only matter if the person trusts them – and for the average millennial, this trust is lacking. In our survey, 40.9% of our participants considerably or completely trusted critic MRAs and 36.4% considerably or completely trusted user MRAs. This is compared to 60.9% who considerably or completely trusted family and friends. This is mirrored in the data we collected from our focus groups, where the majority of participants trusted family and friends instead of aggregates. From our focus groups and interviews, it seems that this is due to the belief that friends can give you personalized opinions that will more closely match your own. This idea was also reflected in our interview with the participant who used MRAs, where they developed their own network of critics that they trust because they have similar opinions to themself.

Extreme Scores Matter

When reviewing the data, it became apparent that only scores that were incredibly low or high affected any behaviours of the participants. Almost all of the correlations between MRAs and participant behaviour seem to appear only if the score was either 0-19% or 80-100% on Rotten Tomatoes. This is consistent with the data collected in the focus groups and interviews, as the only time anyone mentioned a change in behaviour was when a movie had a very low or high score. iJournal, Vol 6, No. 1, 14 Allman & Medeiros, Rotten Tomatoes and Chill? MRAs and Their Impact on Decision-making

For example, in our focus group a participant mentioned they would have decided against seeing a movie had they known the Rotten Tomato score was 9%. On the other end of the scale, when pre- sented with the score of a movie they hadn’t heard about which had a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, various members of the focus group said that, while they would not decide to go to see the movie solely because of that score, that they would be willing to learn more about the movie and watch the trailer. Our interview with the participant who liked MRAs reflected a similar sentiment, as the participant had decided to watch or not watch certain movies because they ended up with a really very high or low score on Rotten Tomatoes. Overall, it seems that only extreme scores produce a benefit or a deterrent to participants’ desire to watch a movie.

Marketing Matters

As an unintentional result of our research, we discovered that movie reviews of any kind were less important as factors in decision-making than film marketing and casting.A combined 64.7% of participants said they would always or often decide to watch a movie because they are a fan of the series. Other key factors that encouraged viewership were movies having certain actors or because the participants liked the trailer for the movie. Similarly, within the focus groups, when shown a movie score on Rotten Tomatoes, instead of saying they would see the movie due to its score participants said they had decided to watch that film because they enjoyed the series, actor, or trailer. Specific examples include one participant going to see the film Downsizing because it starred Matt Damon, and multiple participants having gone to see Incredibles 2 because they were a fan of the first film.

Recommendations and Insights

This study was inspired by an article about how movie executives were blaming Rotten To- matoes for disappointing box office results. We wanted to know whether this was valid criticism based on how people engage with MRAs and how people ultimately decide what movies to watch. Our research seems to indicate that decision-making about movies is influenced by more multifac- eted factors than simply the use of MRAs. People favour personalized opinions from family and friends, familiarity with franchises they already enjoy, and actors and actresses they recognize in iJournal, Vol 6, No. 1, 15 Allman & Medeiros, Rotten Tomatoes and Chill? MRAs and Their Impact on Decision-making their decision-making processes. If movie executives want people to come see their films, these are the factors they need to keep in mind.

For sites like Rotten Tomatoes to become an important source when people are deciding what films to watch, they need to increase their trustworthiness.When people trust MRAs, they are influenced by them. Conversely, the individuals who do not trust them believe they have good reasons not to; that reviews are bought, critics are biased, and anonymous reviewers are untrust- worthy. Expressing the demographics of critics and the reviewing criteria they use more clearly could potentially increase the trustworthiness of MRAs.

We recommend that this study be furthered using additional qualitative methods to get a deeper understanding of how people decide what movies to watch. A content analysis of social media posts on sites like Reddit, Twitter, and Instagram, combined with interviews and focus groups could lead to rich and informative data that could be of use to movie industry stakeholders.

iJournal, Vol 6, No. 1, 16 Allman & Medeiros, Rotten Tomatoes and Chill? MRAs and Their Impact on Decision-making Appendix

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