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Research opportunities at the movies.

Article Excerpt
1. Introduction

The complex and dynamic interactions that determine the success or failure of motion pictures make the industry not only interesting, but also challenging to study. In their article in this issue, Eliashberg et al. (2006) have provided a comprehensive overview of the motion picture industry, reviewing the large body of research and identifying important research questions. In this comment, I will briefly explore some of the ideas associated with their work. First, I will address the relation between movies and other new product categories and associated research opportunities. Second, I will briefly address a marketing phenomenon that is huge in practice and mostly ignored in the marketing literature; namely, product placement. Third, like Eliashberg et al. (2006), I will suggest that we can improve our knowledge in even the most heavily researched area of motion pictures, the determinants of movie success.

2. Movies and New Product Development

Eliashberg et al. (2006) note a number of reasons to study movies, one of which is that insights may generalize to other industries that have similar characteristics. When movie researchers speculate as to what other product categories their results might generalize to, music, books, video games, and fashion are the usual suspects. More broadly, the rapid introduction of new movies makes the industry an appealing context to explore issues in new product development (NPD) and commercialization, generally. Movies, however, differ in significant ways from product categories that are...