Beyond the roadshow: How audiences’ motivations for watching roadshows and their experiences shape fan loyalty to the film

Roadshows, consisting of a film screening and a question-and-answer session with core members of the production team and cast, are usually held in cinemas and university auditoriums (Min & Stijn et al., 2020). Due to Covid-19, the Chinese film market has experienced a severe supply shortage since 2021. After lifting strict epidemic control, the entertainment consumer market was booming, and films released consumption potential. Taking the film Creation of The Gods I: Kingdom of Storms as an example, with the support of the audience's spontaneous publicity and the team's marketing, the film received a box office of approximately 2.479 billion yuan during the period.

Previous work has found that roadshows can not only go deep into the market and directly reach the target audience, increase the proportion of films scheduled in local theaters, and increase box office output (Sun et al., 2021), but can also create topics and excellent reputations. However, there is little research on audience motivation to watch film roadshows and loyalty to films after viewing.

This article is based on the uses and gratifications theory and customer loyalty, focusing on the relationship between audience motivation and loyalty in the film industry. It has been noted that satisfaction with the motivation to use leads to increased loyalty, e.g. Cheung et al. (2023). However, rarely research has examined whether audience loyalty to a film rises once their motivation to watch a film roadshow has been satisfied (e.g., repeat trips to the cinema, recommending others to watch). Hence, in this study, four macro motivations were obtained from the literature to use as independent variables, namely "Information Needs," "Entertainment Needs," "Social Interaction," and "Personal Identity Needs" (McQuail, 1983). Loyalty was used as the dependent variable, and satisfaction as the mediating variable.

The main research questions of this paper are the following three: Q1: What viewing motivation is most important? Q2: What viewing motivation most significantly influences satisfaction? Q3: What motivation, when satisfied, most significantly affects film loyalty?

This study collected useful feedback questionnaires from 243 audiences who had attended a film roadshow. The findings of this study are: social interaction is the most important motivation to watch a film roadshow; personal identity needs the greatest impact on satisfaction; the motivation to watch a film roadshow and the audience's loyalty to the film shows a significant positive correlation, in which the audience's motivation of information needs the greatest impact on the film's loyalty.

Under the theoretical framework of U&G theory and Customer Loyalty, this research focuses on whether existing revisit intention and consumer loyalty behaviour after watching a film roadshow. Furthermore, a new model of the relationship between motivation, satisfaction, and loyalty is investigated. In practical terms, this study can provide a reference for film production companies to promote their films, such as roadshow scheduling or interaction, to promote the box office and word-of-mouth of their films.