The authors investigate how critics affect the box office performance of films and how the effects may be moderated by stars and budgets. The authors examine the process through which critics affect box office revenue, that is, whether they influence the decision of the film going public (their role as influencers), merely predict the decision (their role as predictors), or do both. They find that both positive and negative reviews are correlated with weekly box office revenue over an eight-week period, suggesting that critics play a dual role: They can influence and predict box office revenue. However, the authors find the impact of negative reviews (but not positive reviews) to diminish over time, a pattern that is more consistent with critics' role as influencers. The authors then compare the positive impact of good reviews with the negative impact of bad reviews to find that film reviews evidence a negativity bias; that is, negative reviews hurt performance more than positive reviews help performance, but only during the first week of a film's run. Finally, the authors examine two key moderators of critical reviews, stars and budgets, and find that popular stars and big budgets enhance box office revenue for films that receive more negative critical reviews than positive critical reviews but do little for films that receive more positive reviews than negative reviews. Taken together, the findings not only replicate and extend prior research on critical reviews and box office performance but also offer insight into how film studios can strategically manage the review process to enhance box office revenue.

Building on recent research examining the influence of decision making on subsequent goal striving and decision enactment, we consider and elaborate on the mechanisms through which effortful decisions are made, maintained, and enacted. Our proposed framework builds on the Dholakia and Bagozzi (2002) model, distinguishes between two important types of intentions and desires, and shows that the motivation-mustering function of the decision process is mediated by goal and implementation desires. In addition to decision processes, the roles of goal feasibility, anticipated emotions, attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control are also elaborated on. Through a two-wave field study tracking real decisions and their pursuit by participants, we find empirical support for our model of effortful decision making and enactment.

The authors contributed equally to this article and are listed in alphabetical order. They acknowledge the helpful comments of the three anonymous JMR reviewers, Sharan Jagpal, and Brian T. Ratchford. The authors also thank David Walls for providing the ACNielsen EDI data and S. Abraham Ravid for giving them access to his data. SUMAN BASUROY, KALPESH KAUSHIK DESAI, and DEBABRATA TALUKDAR*The contribution of this research lies in the use of real-world data to test several hypotheses about the role of two signals-sequels and advertising expenditures-in the motion picture industry. The authors analyze the data with a dynamic simultaneous-equations model of the drivers and the interrelationships of the behaviors of movie audiences, studios, and exhibitors. Specifically, the authors test for the attenuating role of third-party information sources, such as critics' review consensus and cumulative word of mouth, on the strength of the two aforementioned signals. The authors find evidence of such an effect both at the release phase across movies and over the postrelease phase for any movie. Notably, they hypothesize and show that sequels and advertising expenditures have a positive interaction effect on box office revenues. This is an important finding because though most firms use multiple signals for their products, empirical work on the interaction of two or more signals is rare. This study offers several new and interesting empirical insights into the market dynamics of the motion picture industry.

Category management (CM) is a recent retail management initiative that aims at improving a retailer's overall performance in a product category through more coordinated buying, merchandising, and pricing of the brands in the category than in the past. Despite tremendous retailer and manufacturer interest in the process of CM and its rapid adoption in the industry, much uncertainty exists about the consequences of CM for channel members. The present study focuses on how a shift to CM by a retailer affects its equilibrium prices, sales, and profitability in a competitive retail setting. On the basis of an analysis of a model of two competing national brand manufacturers that supply two competing common retailers, the authors find that one retailer's adoption of CM increases its average unit price of the category and reduces its sales volume and revenues. However, this retailer can still enjoy an increase in its gross margin profits as competing manufacturers' wholesale prices fall in the process. Also, the CM adopter's profits are greater than those of a symmetric competing retailer that follows the traditional brand-centered management of a product category when the interbrand competition is high but interstore competition is low. Applying the intervention analysis methodology, the authors empirically test several of these analytical findings, employing a unique data set that contains information about a supermarket chain's weekly average unit prices and sales of the laundry detergent category before and after this product category was moved to CM by the retailer. The propositions that adoption of CM will lead to higher retail prices and lower sales are upheld in this empirical study. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for practitioners and researchers, the limitations of the study, and directions for further research.

Academic research pertaining to the marketing of cultural products such as Broadway shows, books, music, and movies has identified a product's genre (or type), star power, and critics' reviews as important factors influencing the market performance of an individual product. Prior research, however, has not investigated the joint influences of these factors. The current study extends previous research by empirically investigating the managerially relevant interactive influences of these factors within the context of the motion-picture industry. For example, should producers of more familiar genre movies, such as dramas and comedies, feature popular, but expensive, stars? Real-world data from two distinct time periods are used to test the hypotheses. The findings are consistent across the two time periods and reveal that for more familiar genre movies, star power and the valence of critics' reviews have less impact on the movie's performance in the market. In contrast, for the less familiar genre movies, stronger (vs. weaker) star power and more (vs. less) positive reviews have positive influence on the market performance. Further, for movies with less star power, the valence of critics' reviews has no impact on the performance. In contrast, for movies with greater star