How Reviewing on Letterboxd Transforms Movie Consumption Experiences

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines how online movie reviewing can transform consumption experiences.While existing marketing research has primarily treated movie reviews as predictive outputs forbox office performance, little is known about the experiential effects of reviewing on consumersthemselves. A multi-level model of a reviewing practice (Figure 1) is created using ConsumerCulture Theory (CCT) and the Associative-Propositional Evaluation (APE) model.Empirical materials were collected through netnography on Letterboxd and semi-structuredinterviews with 13 active users, resulting in 260 user reviews and approximately 16 hours ofinterview data.Thematic analysis identified three transformational outcomes. First, online reviewing prolongs amovie consumption experience through affective and cognitive pathways. Second, reviews canfunction as temporal anchors that make episodic traces visible and revisitable. Third, onlinereviewing necessitates the performance of movie consumer identities, which actively changesconsumer ideologies and the marketplace culture. The findings demonstrate that an online moviereviewing practice affects consumption experiences.This thesis contributes a consumer-centric perspective to movie marketing research, byreorienting attention from financial outcomes to experiential transformations