Film or Film Brand? UK Consumers' Engagement with Films as Brands

Many films are produced annually, but only a small number of films reach the state of being considered and identified by consumers as film brands. Film-brand identification is difficult to achieve, but it leads to engagement behaviours (e.g. repetitive viewing, positive word-of-mouth and purchase intention of relevant merchandise/franchise). To help film-makers better develop films as brands and benefit from their brand status, this paper takes a consumer-centric approach to investigate how and why films are identified and engaged by consumers as brands. Using an abductive mode of reasoning, a consumer film-brand engagement framework was developed through qualitative data collected from 35 semi-structured interviews and then validated using survey data with 1030 participants. This consumer film-brand engagement framework shows that film identity coherency drives film-brand identification through the mediation effects of popularity, sequels and emotional bonding, whilst marketing effort, iconic status, franchising/merchandising activities and timelessness are highlighted as key moderators, resulting in positive brand engagement behaviour. The paper sheds new light on film-branding literature by theoretically explaining and empirically showing a sequential and consolidated process, which consumers go through to identify and engage with films as brands, leading to several managerial and marketing implications for film-makers.