How Reviewing on Letterboxd Transforms Movie Consumption Experiences

Abstract

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