A smart-phone changes the market of communication as well as modern people’s lifestyles, via its additional functions, such as paper work and e-mail, beyond mobile phone’s traditional functions of voice communication and text message. With the inc...
A smart-phone changes the market of communication as well as modern people’s lifestyles, via its additional functions, such as paper work and e-mail, beyond mobile phone’s traditional functions of voice communication and text message. With the increase of smart-phone users, the use of SNS has increased as well. SNS stands for Social Network Service and a service of which main goal is to communicate and share information online with users. The use of SNS exceeds the use of e-mail worldwide. According to a domestic research agency, the time of Korean people’s use of SNS is about two times longer than that of their use of e-mail. According to the data published by a market research institution, eMaketer, the number of users who used SNS once or more in a month was 1,200,000,000, as of December, 2011. As SNS has been activated and its users have increased radically, business entities have introduced such a marketing technique that using SNS of providing two-way communication with purchasers, by getting out of traditional one-way marketing technique. In the past, the channel of contacting with products was business entities’ one-sided ads or promotions. But now they deliver the message of products using a more advanced means. SNS-used marketing attracts peoples’ attention in a variety of areas and produces practical effects, but studies on film-related SNS are insufficient for the present.
This study was initiated with a critical mind that since ‘SNS is used as a promotional means of two-way communication as well as an important tool of marketing recently, this social trend has to be applied to the film industry.’ In this regard, this study tried to examine the conception, type and current status of SNS via related literature, find out the characteristic factors of SNS information, look into the structural validity of research models, presented by preceding studies, examine the influence of the characteristic factors of SNS information upon the intention of watching movies, and then look into the influence of the characteristic factors of SNS information upon the intention of recommending movies. In addition, this study examined the influence of the intention of watching movies, formed through SNS information, upon the intention of recommending movies and then tried to present discriminated indices of SNS-oriented film marketing, based on study findings on the influential characteristics of SNS information upon the intention of watching and recommending movies.
In this study, the characteristic factors of SNS information were classified into simplicity, sympathy, enjoyment, reliability and recentness based on preceding studies, and then related hypotheses were established to work out results. In order to examine general features that were related to the use of SNS, frequency analysis was carried out. In order to examine the reliability of test tools, Cronbach‘s α was calculated by variables. In order to look into the influence of the characteristic factors of SNS information upon the intention of watching movies, regression analysis was carried out by establishing SNS information factors of simplicity, sympathy, enjoyment, reliability and recentness as independent variables and the intention of watching movies as a dependent variable. In order to look into the influence of the characteristic factors of SNS information upon the intention of recommending movies, regression analysis was carried out by establishing SNS information factors of simplicity, sympathy, enjoyment, reliability and recentness as independent variables and the intention of recommending movies as a dependent variable. And in order to examine the influence of the intention of watching movies upon the intention of recommending movies, regression analysis was carried out by establishing the intention of watching movies as an independent variable and the intention of recommending movies as a dependent variable.
Study findings are as follows:
Such SNS information factors as simplicity, sympathy, enjoyment, reliability and recentness had significant influence upon such dependent variables as the intention of watching and recommending movies. In addition, the intention of watching movies had significant influence upon the intention of recommending movies.
According to the beta values with which the priority of variables could be examined, the intention of watching movies was significantly influenced by SNS information factors of sympathy (.488), enjoyment (.399), simplicity (.339), recentness (.398) and reliability (.297) in order. On the other hand, the intention of recommending movies was significantly influenced by SNS information factors of sympathy (.465), recentness (.364), simplicity (.315), enjoyment (.315), and reliability (.309) in order. In other words, study findings show that the most influential SNS information factor upon the intention of watching and recommending movies is sympathy, whereas the least influential SNS information factor is reliability. The significance of the intention of watching and recommending movies was .603.
The implication and suggestion of study findings are as follows:
First, by defining the characteristic factors of SNS information, the intention of watching movies and the intention of recommending movies, and developing test variables of which reliability and validity were confirmed, this study prepared a theoretical base of empirical studies in the future.
Second, through the process of systemic examination on preceding studies, this study presented the characteristic factors of SNS information and its influential factors upon the intention of watching and recommending movies, together with verified variables and test items, based on empirical analysis.
Third, this study verified the fact that all the characteristic factors of SNS information, namely simplicity, sympathy, enjoyment, reliability and recentness, had significantly positive influence upon the intention of watching movies and the intention of recommending movies. And this study concluded that among them, sympathy explained the intention of watching movies by 23.8% and the intention of recommending movies by 21.6%, thus proving itself to be a most influential factor. In this vein, it is necessary for film marketers to try hard in providing sympathy, when they use SNS as a marketing tool.
Fourth, based on the conclusion that when the intention of watching movies was formed via SNS information, SNS information also had significantly positive influence upon the intention of recommending movies, this study presented the importance of SNS-oriented marketing again. In order to achieve the success of film in the future, it is necessary to develop detailed marketing techniques according to the characteristic factors of SNS information.