Film or film brand? UK consumers’ engagement with films as brands

Although the film industry is very competitive, and many films are produced annually, only a small number of films successfully engage consumers as brands and the rest have failed to break even or to make a profit. To address this pressing matter and help filmmakers better develop films as brands, this paper takes on a consumer-centric approach to investigate how and why films are engaged by consumers as brands. Using an abductive mode of reasoning, 35 exploratory semi-structured interviews with active film viewers were first analysed thematically using NVivo; a consumer film-brand engagement framework was developed and then validated by 1030 survey responses in SEM. This consumer film-brand engagement framework extends film branding literature by theoretically explaining and empirically showing a sequential and consolidated process which consumers go through to identifying and engage with films as brands, resulting in positive brand engagement behaviour. Franchising/merchandising activities are highlighted as key moderators on consumer-film brand engagement, leading to several managerial and marketing implications for filmmakers.