Celebrating Success: Prof Suraksha Gupta

Congratulations to Prof Suraksha Gupta and her co-authors Kohli G., Yen Y. and Alwi S.F. on the recent acceptance of the paper: “Film or film brand? UK consumers’ engagement with films as brands“, British Journal of Management.

Abstract:

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 filmmakers 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 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 filmmakers.