Forecasting box-office revenue by considering social network services in the Korean market

The Korean movie market is an extremely dynamic market. Social network services are also rapidly growing in Korea and comments on movies in social network services (SNS) are increasingly influencing the movie industry. In this paper, we address the issue of forecasting box-office revenue by considering the comments on movies in SNS. We analyze the data in the Korean movie market by using regression analysis and the Bass diffusion model. Our results show that the number of screens is the only significant variable before release, whereas positive and negative mentions on SNS are also essential after release. In addition, the hybrid method provides the idea of employing SNS data into diffusion models for obtaining effective forecasting results.