 How emotions in online reviews affect movie sales: Evidence from HollywoodRahat Ullah, Muhammad Aftab Alam and Atya Zeb Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 2025, vol. 85, issue C Abstract: Movies evoke strong human emotions that resonate in the content of online reviews, known as electronic word of mouth (eWOM). Existing literature suggests that positive content enhances, and negative content reduces movie sales, with negative content having a stronger effect. We demonstrate that there is a limit to the negative emotional content's impact on sales, beyond which it boosts sales. We extract positive and negative emotional content from 80 Hollywood movie reviews (N = 23,046) and empirically examine their influence on movie sales. Results indicate that for high eWOM volume, the effect of positive content increases progressively, while negative content has diminishing returns. Grounded in ‘Emotions as Social Information’ (EASI) theory, this study provides marketers and researchers with a new understanding of how emotional content in eWOM influences moviegoers' choice of movie and sales. Our typology—Flop, Hype, Star, and Hit—helps predict movie sales and design targeted strategies. Keywords: Online reviews; eWOM; Emotional content; Buying behavior; Movies (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joreco:v:85:y:2025:i:c:s0969698925000839 DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104304 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services is currently edited by Harry Timmermans More articles in Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.