Film review preferences in the new economy

In the new economy a new information source for experience goods, like movies, has been introduced: the online user reviews. In an interactive way you are able to get information about different movies in an online social network. The weird thing about online user reviews is that everyone can post their opinion online. There are no boundaries anymore. This means that without a lot of knowledge about movies, people give their opinion and try to convince others to watch a movie or not. In the online social networks you trust the opinion of a person you don’t know and is even not an expert. This is a strange development, because what is the basis of this trust? According to some researchers people have trust in a fellow consumer, because they feel connected with them. They have the same thoughts about movies.(Bickart & Schindler, 2001) In contrast to experts, who know more about the movies, but also tell a lot of things people are less interested in. The fact that those online user reviews are interwoven in online social networks, also called word-to-mouth communities, have some consequences. This use of online social networks stimulate people to read online user reviews and with a network your reach is much bigger than one expert review. Although this impact should be enormous, this research will mostly focus on the use of expert reviews and online user reviews. The online social networks are seen as an influence on why people use certain reviews, just like trust. But there are more elements important when we look for reasons of the use of an expert review or online user review. The preference for a certain movie, arthouse or popular, already influences the preference for a certain review. This separation is important, because arthouse movie lovers and popular movie lovers, think very different about what is important for a movie decision. Also the criteria people use for their movie choice gives some more specified information. Do some criteria have a review preference as a consequence? And the last one discussed in this research are the demands people have on information sources. Which review fits best to these demands? These elements will all give us more insight into the use of expert reviews and online user reviews. To see whether the online user reviews have replaced or completed the expert reviews, this research will also look at the consumer behavior after using a certain review. It could influence as well the direct movie choice or stimulate the recommendation to others. I have researched all this with help of a survey and asked people questions about their use and the reasons for this use. It gave some important results. Expert reviews are not yet replaced by online user reviews, because of a higher trust in those experts and because they provide better information. Probably they also won’t ever be replaced by online user reviews, because they will never reach the same level, especially not for arthouse movies.