Star Wars: The Importance of Product Preference and Survey

Transcription

1 Prior Product Preference: Influence of Previous Star Wars Films on Star Wars Fan Attitudes Dr Stephen Dann Advertising Marketing and Public Relations, Queensland University Technology, Brisbane, Australia 1

2 Prior Product Preference: Influence of Previous Star Wars Films on Star Wars Fan Attitudes ABSTRACT This study was conducted as a result of the author realising that nearly 300 hundred people would be queuing for the midnight session of Revenge of the Sith. Working on the assumption that a survey would provide momentary respite from the boredom of queuing, the author conducted a study on attitudes to the Star Wars films and associated issues, including use of Star Wars characters for product endorsement, and the reactions to advertising featuring Star Wars characters. Results were predominantly consistent across gender, with fans who endorsed the use of Star Wars characters in advertising being influenced positively by those adverts. Self described fandom played a significant part in determining attitudes to advertising containing Star Wars characters Keywords: Star Wars, Market Research, Advertising, Endorsement, Attitude to film INTRODUCTION With the release of the third and final episode of the new Star Wars trilogy, it signified the end of an era for science fiction and fantasy. As of May 2005, most of the major science fiction franchises have ceased developing new product with the Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Matrix trilogies having now been completed, and the previously evergreen Star Trek franchise ceasing trading. As the launch of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith represented the last significant midnight launch event for the foreseeable future, it was chosen to be the platform for a study on the attitudes of Star Wars fans towards the Star Wars movies, use of Star Wars characters in advertising plus copy testing of actual Star Wars endorsed adverts, and broad attitudes towards elements of the Star Wars fandom experience. Several terms need to be defined for the purpose of this paper - "Original trilogy" represents Star Wars Episodes IV to VI encompassing A New Hope (ANH), Empire Strikes Back (ESB) and Return of the Jedi (RotJ). "Prequel trilogy" or "Prequels" represents Episodes I to III, covering The Phantom Menace (TPM), Attack of the Clones (AotC) and Revenge of the Sith (RotS). NATURE OF THE STUDY Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith represented a curious point in innovation adoption as both a new product (discontinuous innovation), and the culmination of existing cinematic franchise (dynamic continuation). As the third episode of a six part serial, where Episode IV had screened nearly 20 years prior, there was little about the end of the film that would not have been known to the members of audience who had seen Episodes IV-VI. Yet the third instalment of the prequel trilogy 2

3 inspired consumers to pre-purchase tickets to a midnight session, then queue up to an excess of 14 hours for spaces in the cinema. From a subjective personal experience, the author pre-purchased tickets nearly one month in advance and proceeded to wait for nearly eight hours in queue on the release day. The nature of the event as the "last" blockbuster also provided a unique opportunity to capture data from an unusual sample - dedicated film fans. With only the Harry Potter franchise continuing to produce movies not based around a continuing science-fiction / fantasy universe derived from a television series (Star Trek, Firefly), this was the last major movie launch for an existing franchise.. Consequently, the purpose of the study was to capture a snapshot of this phenomena of the Star Wars midnight movie launch. LITERATURE REVIEW Due to the exploratory nature of the study, a brief review is required to establish the selection of data collection tools. The survey was based around two studies - the influence of prior product attitudes on the new movie and its influence on the attitudes towards commercial exploitation of Star Wars. As an exploratory study into attitudes and opinions, the study was developed in terms of "what can we learn that will be useful?" rather than pursing an identified gap in the literature or a specific hypothesis. With the opportunity to create a larger than usual survey, due to amount of time people had available in the queuing process, the survey was broad ranging in nature. It encompassed attitudes to previous Star Wars movies, optimism towards Episode III, attitudes towards the use of Star Wars characters in advertising, and copy tested three adverts using the Wells (1964) Emotional Quotient scale. The three copy tested adverts were two screen captures from the American Diet Pepsi Commercial "Jedi Mind Trick", and a screen capture from the Pepsi Website which hosted the online version of the advert. (Brand Republic, 2005). 3

4 METHODOLOGY Surveys were personally administered to the sample population with 200 surveys distributed for a useable response of 178 (89% response rate) from an estimated total population of 300 filmgoers (n=178, 60% response rate overall). Selection of the sampling unit was based on the cinema where the author and their assistant had tickets to the midnight screening. The sample consisted of 178 respondents, 124 males and 42 females (n=166), with ages ranging from 16 to 41, with a mean of age of 26.4 (SD=5.8). The Study The study consists of two parts. First, the influence of prior product preference, as measured by opinion towards the previous five Star Wars movies is examined against optimism towards Episode III. Second, prior product preference is tested against the advertising semantic scale, and the Wells (1964) Emotional Quotient Scales to determine if film preference has an influence on acceptance of Star Wars endorsed advertising. Prior Product - Star Wars Movie Preference Respondents were asked to express their like/dislike of the five existing Star Wars movies on a five point Likert scale. Episode I: The Phantom Menace was the least popular film, which is consistent with the level of criticism it received in Star Wars fandom. Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back has the highest rating. There were no statistically significant differences between the genders on the popularity of the five movies, although women were slightly more forgiving of Episode I. (Table 1) Table 1: Prior Product Preference Results: Attitudes to the Star Wars Movies by Gender Mean Mean Mean SD (male) SD (female) SD Liked Episode I: The Phantom Menace Liked Episode II: Attack of the Clones Liked Episode IV: A New Hope

5 Liked Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back Liked Episode IV: Return of the Jedi Valid N (listwise) 170* N=122 N=37 * 11 respondents did not identify their gender Whilst the five items were not intended for use as a scale, inter-item correlations were recorded to examine relationship between the five movies. These results are reported in Table 2 Table 2: Inter-movie Correlations Episode I Episode II Episode IV Episode V Episode VI Liked Episode I: The Phantom Menace 1 Liked Episode II: Attack of the Clones.661** 1 Liked Episode IV: A New Hope.276**.266** 1 Liked Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.202**.244**.438** 1 Liked Episode IV: Return of the Jedi.279**.166*.375**.290** 1 * Correlation is significant at the.05 level (2-tailed). ** Correlation is significant at the.01 level (2-tailed). For the purpose of the study, the high correlation between Episode I and Episode II, coupled with the relatively relationship between Episode II suggests a possible separation where attitudes to the original trilogy are less influence on the attitudes towards the prequels. Factor analysis of the five items revealed two distinct factors, clustered around the Prequel and Original Trilogy. The Original Trilogy returned an eigenvalue of explaining 45% of the variance, and the Prequel films had an eigenvalue of (21.9% variance). In review, the five movies demonstrate a distinctive clustering around their respective trilogies. 5

6 Prior Product and Optimism towards Episode III In order to examine the influence of preference for the previous films on the level of optimism for the forthcoming film, a new scale was developed to measure respondent levels of optimism toward Episode III. The movie optimism scale was based on in part on the Richins (1997) three item optimism scale. The scale returned an inter item correlation mean of.5507, and an alpha coefficient of The optimism scale was subjected to factor analysis to confirm it measured the single factor. Bartlett's Test of Sphericity was significant, demonstrating significant correlation between variables, the Kaiser- Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy was.762, and Table 3 demonstrates the correlations between the items. Table 3: Interitem correlations for the optimism scale Opt1 Opt2 Opt3 Opt4 OPT1: The trailer left me excited 1 OPT2:I am optimistic about Episode III.387** 1 OPT3:I believe Episode III will be a good film.655**.571** 1 OPT4:I am hopeful about Episode III.506**.659**.713** 1 OPT5:The TV commercials and trailers have encourage me to be optimistic about Episode III.450**.640**.403**.500 ** Correlation is significant at the.01 level (2-tailed). The scale returned an initial eigenvalue of 3.213, explaining 64% of the variance. Subsequent eigenvalues fell below Kaiser's criterion and additional factors were rejected. The scale appears, on the statistical analysis, to be a single factor scale measuring optimism, with a reasonable level of internal consistency. Scale items, along with the summed item total were then correlated against attitudes to the movies to determine if any relationship existed between preference for the previous films, and optimism towards the new movie. In general, attitudes to the films proved to be both positive and for the most part, statistically significantly related to the individual items and the overall scale. The results are listed in Table 4. 6

7 Table 4: Prior Product Preference and Optimism towards Episode III Episode Episode Episode Episode Episode I II IV V VI The trailer left me excited.294**.388**.262**.331**.211** I am optimistic about Episode III -.290** -.195* - I believe Episode III will be a good film.387**.538**.279**.309**.258** I am hopeful about Episode III.203**.354**.325**.274**.240** TV commercials have encouraged me to be optimistic about Episode III -.224**.214**.230**.166* Summed scale 0.275** 0.437** 0.292** 0.333** 0.241** ** Correlation is significant at the.01 level (2-tailed). Attitude towards Episode III produced the most consistent, and strongest, relationships. Those who liked Episode II felt more positively inclined towards Episode III. The absence of a relationship between preferences for Episode I, IV and VI was unexpected. However, the weak relationship between Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back and optimism for Episode III may be related to the darker overtones of both movies as both Episode III and Episode V feature the dark side / Empire in the dominant position at the end of the movies. Overall, attitude to the Episode II proved the most influential, and this may be accounted for in the recency of the film, plus a possible recall bias as Episode II was broadcast on commercial television on the Sunday night prior to the survey being conducted. Prior Product Experience and Advertising Five scale summed item totals relating to advertising were correlated against the attitudes towards the five Star Wars movies. Attitudes to advertising were measured on a five item semantic differential scale. The first copy test advert was based on a screenshot of Yoda starring at a Diet Pepsi can floating across the advert (YODA). The second copy was taken from the Pepsi Website which hosted the online version of the advert (WEBSITE). The final ad copy was a screenshot of Chewbacca, with 7

8 Diet Pepsi accompanying his meal, glaring at a despondent looking Yoda (WOOKIE). The advert includes the subtitle "Don't even think about it" (See Appendix 1 for images). The summed usage scale was based on five semantic differential scale items ("not at all objectionable", "not annoying", "not at all exploitative", "very persuasive" and "impressive, most impressive"). Four of the scale items have been drawn from an existing attitude from an existing advertising study. The last semantic scale item was based on a Star Wars movie quote from Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker, with the full quote being "Impressive. Most impressive. But you are not a Jedi yet". The scale has an alpha of.8244, average inter-item correlation of.4812 and consists of a single factor (eigenvalue 2.938, variance 58.77%). The three advertising copy scales were replications of Wells (1964) Emotional Quotient scale with alpha values of.8507 (Yoda),.8507 (Website) and.9133 (Wookie) respectively. Again, factor analysis was used to determine the scales were measuring the single construct, with all three scales reporting a single factor. The fourth advertising scale was the construction of a summed total scale from the three Wells (1964) copy testing scales. The EQ scale, as used in this study, assess negative reactions to the advertising copy. Composite Response to Advertising The purpose of the composite scale was to assess the response to the three component elements as a single item. This scale is unlikely to have replicable use outside of this study, due to the copy test items being parts of a single advert (eg website teaser to encourage users to view an advert, and two screenshots from that advert). Item measures were reduced to a single scale through a combination of scale (alpha) and factor analysis techniques. In the first instance, the 21 item EQ scale reported an alpha of.9562, with the final scale alpha of.9600, and an inter-item correlation mean of Factor analysis was used once more, with the scale demonstrating a single factor (eigenvalue 8.828, variance 67.9%). Table 5 reports the inter-item correlations for the composite scale. 8

9 Table 5: Composite Scale Inter-item correlation Composite Scale Yoda4: I dislike this ad - Yoda6: I'm tired of this kind of advertising Yoda7: This ad leaves me cold Web3: This ad has little interest for me Web4: I dislike this ad Web5: This is the kind of ad you forget easily Web6: I'm tired of this kind of advertising Web7: This ad leaves me cold W3: This ad has little interest for me W4: I dislike this ad W5: This is the kind of ad you forget easily W6: I'm tired of this kind of advertising W7: This ad leaves me cold All correlations significant at the.01 level (2-tailed). Prior Product Preference and Attitudes to Advertising The Original Trilogy had no relationship with attitudes towards the use of Star Wars character in advertising, or the three copy tested items, whereas the prequel movies had significant results on all of the attitude of towards the Star Wars advertising. Whilst Episode IV had a weak correlation with the Website advertising, further analysis shows the relationship is based around the preference for the first Star Wars movie correlating with the Website EQ scale items of " This ad has little interest for me" (r=-.183*, p=.020) and " This is the kind of ad you forget easily" (r=-.159, p=.044). A possible explanation for this phenomena is that fans of the original Star Wars movie have a greater interest in all things Star Wars due to their longer involvement in the movie franchise. Table 6 has the full results of the correlations. 9

10 Table 6: Interaction between Prior Product Preference and Attitudes to Advertising Correlations Episode I Episode II Episode IV Episode V Episode VI Summed Usage ** Yoda# ** ** Website# * ** * - - Wookie# * ** Composite Ad Scale# ** ** * Correlation is significant at the.05 level (2-tailed). ** Correlation is significant at the.01 level (2-tailed). Overall, attitudes towards Episode I and Episode II remain the most viable method of determining positive or negative reaction to the advertising copy. Episode I has relatively low correlation scores, indicating that it is not a strong predictor. In contrast, attitudes towards Episode II show a higher propensity to be predictors of reactions to the Website advertising, and reaction to the overall advertising. Those respondents with a preference for Episode II have less negative attitudes to the individual copy items, particularly the Website teaser. In addition, preference for Episode II is the only significant indicator of acceptance of the use of Star Wars characters in advertising. Whilst Episode II may not have necessarily been a cinematic masterpiece, it has been beneficial to the marketing messages sold using Star Wars characters. Discussions, Implications and Limitations The most important aspect of the study is also the greatest limitation Episode III represented the (temporary) end of an era of blockbuster science fiction trilogies. Consequently, the study stands as a snapshot of the last of the midnight film queues, and until the next major franchise appears, it will represent the last test of loyalty for obsessive science fiction fans. The first major limitation of the study is the Star-Wars centric nature of the data. Whilst movie trilogies are sufficiently common in science fiction and action cinema, few franchises are expected to product two best selling trilogies decades apart. Consequently, some of the lessons learnt from the Star Wars franchise may be limited in application to future sequel or prequel trilogies (for example, the Matrix Prequel Trilogy in 2021). Similarly, the use of the movie franchise as a composite measure can only be usefully applied to other 10

11 franchise movie series such as Harry Potter, Lethal Weapon, or the rumored Lord of the Rings IV-VI project code named "The Silmarillion". However, some findings are transferable to other movie and marketing projects. First, the study demonstrated that the appeal of a "classic" product, in this study, the Original Trilogy, has limited influence on attitudes towards the use of the current product or brand. Second, prior product preference for a movie as a predictor of optimism towards a sequel is effectively limited to the previous part of the franchise. Episode II may have held a greater influence than Episode I, but all three of the original trilogy virtually failed to have an impact on attitudes towards the third movie. Finally, attitudes to movie characters endorsing off-screen products was mixed and inconsistent further study will be required once this phenomena of fiction characters endorsing real products becomes more common in contemporary advertising. 11

12 References Brand Republic (2005) "Have a Pepsi I will, says Yoda" Dann, S. 1999, Normative Outcomes: Psychographic teaching tool, Marketing Academy of Queensland Conference, University of the Sunshine Coast, December 15-16, 1999 Flynn, L. Goldsmith, R. E. & Eastman, J. K. (1996) Opinion Leaders and Opinion Seekers: Two New Measurement Scales, JAMS, 24, Richins, M.L. (1997) Measuring Emotions in the Consumption Experience, JCR, 24, Wakefield, K.L. and Barnes, J.H. (1996) Retailing Hedonic Consumption: A Model of Sales Promotion of a Leisure Service, JR, 72(4) Wells, William D. "EQ, Son of EQ, and the Reaction Profile," Journal of Marketing, 28, (1964): -52. Zaichkowsky, Judith Lynne, "The Emotional Aspect of Product Involvement," in Advances in Consumer Research, 14, (1985):

13 Appendix 1: Advertising Copy Advertisement 1: Yoda Advertisement 2: Website Advertisement 3: Wookie 13

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