The effect of social media engagement on sequel success

Social media are of growing importance for all companies in terms of gaining insights about consumer opinions. They are the tools through which consumers can engage with brands and interact with their peers. Hence, it is crucial to understand how this consumer engagement can affect a brand. The study is done on the entertainment industry and has a focus on line extensions, or in other words, sequels. It is examined how the parent brand along with social media, from the consumer engagement perspective, relate to the economic performance of a sequel. It is hypothesized that social media play a mediating role in the relationship between the parent brand and the sequel. By analyzing a sample from the motion picture industry, this study provides results that could be applicable in other entertainment products. In total, 178 movie sequel titles along with the number of views and comments on the YouTube pages with their trailers were collected and examined. First, the positive effect of the success of the parent brand on the sequel is validated by two operationalizations, parent movie revenue and previous sequel revenue. Second, the results when testing for a mediating effect indicate that consumer engagement behavior is in fact a mediator in the relationship between the parent brand’s success and the sequel’s success. Considering its dimensions, personal and social-interactive, it is found that both of them have a positive and significant effect on the success of the sequel. However, the parent brand’s effect is still positive and significant, making the mediating effect complementary.