Can social media-driven customer engagement help movie producers to increase movie sales? Movie producers use social media to boost customer engagement; however, our understanding of whether there is a relationship between pre-consumption customer engagement and movie sales is limited. This research explores what drives the success of movies on the opening-weekend. We examine the relationship between pre-consumption customer engagement driven by social media (i.e., personal and interactive engagement) and movie performance (i.e., opening-weekend box office revenues). Driven by the debate about the potential capacity of social media-driven customer engagement to improve movie performance and the limited understanding of the association of pre-consumption customer engagement and movie performance, this research suggests that social media-enabled customer engagement (i.e., personal and interactive engagement) has the potential to improve movie performance, and these two types of engagement can interact to make this effect stronger. We analyze these relationships drawing from the uses and gratifications theory and the social media affordances perspective that motivate customers to interact in social media. The theoretical model evaluation was tested on a unique and original dataset composed of 966 movies released in the U.K. and Spain. The empirical analysis suggests that personal and interactive engagement are positively related to movie performance, and the positive effects of personal and interactive engagement on movie performance are mutually reinforcing. This research contributes to Information Systems (IS) research by theorizing and empirically showing how customer engagement driven by social media creates business value by improving movie performance.

社交媒体驱动的客户参与度可以帮助电影制片人增加电影销量吗？电影制片人使用社交媒体来提高客户参与度；但是，我们对消费前客户参与度和电影销售之间是否存在关联的了解是有限的。这项研究探索了推动电影在开幕周末取得成功的因素。我们研究了社交媒体驱动的消费前客户参与度（即个人和互动参与度）与电影表演（即周末开放票房收入）之间的关系。受到有关社交媒体驱动的客户参与改善电影表现的潜在能力的辩论的推动，以及对消费前客户参与度与电影表现之间的关联的了解有限，这项研究表明，启用社交媒体的客户参与度（即个人互动参与度）具有改善电影表现的潜力，并且这两种类型的参与度可以相互作用以增强这种效果。我们从使用和满足理论以及促使客户在社交媒体中进行互动的社交媒体提供能力的角度出发，分析了这些关系。理论模型评估在由英国和西班牙发行的966部电影组成的独特原始数据集中进行了测试。实证分析表明，个人和互动参与与电影表演成正相关，个人和互动参与对电影表演的积极影响是相辅相成的。