December 5th, 2023, Lesley Simeon
A stellar star cast, an ace director, top-notch camera work and an exciting plot - does any of that matter if a friend told you a movie isn’t worth watching? In this piece, we explore findings from a YouGov survey conducted across 17 international markets to see how helpful word-of-mouth is for viewers when choosing which movies and TV shows to watch.
The results show that 16% of those polled across the markets say word-of-mouth helps them a great deal and 41% say it helps them a fair amount.
Just under a quarter of them (23%) say word-of-mouth doesn’t help very much, whereas fewer than one in ten (9%) say it doesn’t help them at all when making cinema and TV show-related choices.
Demographically, more women than men say they rely on word-of-mouth to make cinema and TV show related purchase decisions.
We see that equal proportions of men and women say word-of-mouth helps them a great deal when it comes to cinema and TV shows - 16% each. Two in five men (40%) and over two in five women (43%) say it helps them a fair amount.
Let’s now see, by market, whether word-of-mouth influences consumers’ cinema and TV show choices.
Asians more likely than Europeans to say word-of-mouth helps them ‘a great deal’ when it comes to cinema and TV shows
Nearly a third of consumers in Mexico (32%) say word-of-mouth helps them a great deal with purchase decisions around cinema and TV shows - the most likely across all our markets to say so. UAE (27%), India (25%), Hong Kong (23%) and Indonesia (21%) wrap up the top five markets.
Over a third of Americans (36%) agree that word-of-mouth helps them a fair amount in sorting their cinema and TV show choices. More than two in five Brits (45%) agree.
In Europe, Spain accounts for the largest proportion of consumers who say word-of-mouth helps them a great deal (19%). The country also leads across all markets we survey, in saying word-of-mouth helps them a fair amount (53%). Hong Kong and Poland (48%) follow Spain.
Consumers in our Nordic markets - Sweden and Denmark (5% each) are least likely to find word-of-mouth helping them a great deal with cinemas and TV shows choices. But for over a quarter of consumers here (31% in Sweden and 27% in Denmark), it helps a fair amount.
Notably, the Danes (37%) and the Swedes (38%) are among consumers who are most likely to say word-of-mouth doesn’t help them much. The Swedes in fact account for the largest proportion of consumers across markets for whom word-of-mouth doesn’t help at all (18%) in choosing cinemas and TV shows, and related products. In Asia, Singaporeans are most likely to say (28%) it isn’t of much help.
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Methodology: YouGov Surveys: Serviced provide quick survey results from nationally representative or targeted audiences in multiple markets. The data is based on surveys of adults aged 18+ years in 17 markets with sample sizes varying between 2001 and 508 for each market. All surveys were conducted online in September 2023. Data from each market uses a nationally representative sample apart from Mexico and India, which use urban representative samples, and Indonesia and Hong Kong, which use online representative samples. Learn more about YouGov Surveys: Serviced.