Research firm Ipsos OTX MediaCT polled more than 24,000 moviegoers to gauge their media consumption habits at the recent TheGrill conference held September 20th and 21st.
About half of the respondents said they get movie recommendations from friends and family, and 16% mention co-workers as their movie review go-to sources. According to the research, face-to-face recommendations overshadow recommendations through social media: Facebook offers up 11% of the movie recommendations that responds said they rely on, and Twitter only accounted for 1% of movie recommendations that influence those polled.
The study takes a closer look at the “Twitter Effect.” Of those who do use Twitter, 46% said they ignore movie recommendations on the microblogging platform from strangers, and 40% said they aren’t even influenced by recommendations from real-life friends.
According to Social Times, which reported the research, this casts doubt on the much-reported “Twitter Effect” on movie ticket sales. In our opinion, however, the statistics don’t necessarily tell the whole story. While Twitter may directly influence only a small percentage of overall movie-goers, other research has shown that Twitter users, in turn, have a greater proportion of influence in other media. We would caution the entertainment industry against under-estimating Twitter’s ability to very quickly spread the word among a proportionally small but very influential audience.
