4.1.2. Survey Results

The purpose of the survey was to identify the most popular release and post-release strategies in the film promotion among moviegoers. The questionnaire was posted on the most popular website for moviegoers in the USA named IMDb.com. One hundred people completed it, some of them wrote interesting comments and Ray William Johnson, creator and host of popular show “=3” on YouTube, also gave the author additional information relevant to the survey.

55% of the responses came from men and 45% from women. Among them 8% is between 12-17 years, 26% is between 18-24 years, 25% between 25-34 years, 16% between 35-44 years, 14% between 45-54 years and 11% who were over 54. 83% of these participants live in big cities, such as New York, Los Angeles and San Diego, 11% in small towns, for example Springfield, Hampton and Lancaster and only 6% in villages which are located near cities and towns, for example Oakland, Lincoln and Lakewood.

Chart 1. Gender distribution of the survey (USA) Chart 2. Age distribution of the survey (USA)

46% of people who answered said that they saw from one to two domestic films in the last three months, 31% that they saw three to five films and 23% wrote that they saw more than six films. On average people prefer to see films in cinemas or at home.

35% of the audience thinks that film marketing in the USA is weak and people do not pay attention to film promotional campaigns. 55% disagree with this and 10% are neutral.

Actors and actresses attract 19% viewers and directors only 16%. Interesting storylines attract 30%, trailers 35%. These numbers show the importance of film promotion at the release stage.

The most common way to find information about new films among American moviegoers is the Internet, voted by 45%, posters and cinema trailers voted by 23%, magazines and journals voted by 19% and TV adverts voted by 13%.

Chart 3. Common ways to find information about new films among moviegoers (USA)

From proposed promotion tools 41% voted for word-of-mouth, 32% for social media, 18% for television, 5% for radio and 4% for posters and billboards. Many people responded that film reviews and print affects them most.

90% buy DVDs and Blu-rays of films which are of interest. Among these 85% were over 25. Those who do not buy DVDs and Blu-rays 83% were under 24.

81% of people who were watching films on the Internet 86% were 24 years. 19% of the American respondents do not watch films on the Internet.

27% buy merchandise associated with films, while 73% do not. Some over 30 with families say they buy merchandise related to films for their children. For example, a woman from Kensington bought more than nine hundred figurines associated with The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Many agreed (97%) that they enjoy taking part in competitions for different film promotion activities. Ones disagreeing with this were over 45.

Ray William Johnson volunteered a lot of comments not all of which are relevant to the dissertation. He is 25 years old and lives in New York and watches 3 - 4 films in three months. As an Internet critic he thinks that the Internet represents the future in advertisement. His own show on YouTube has more than 7 million viewings and his film, also shown on the Internet, had 10 million viewings with no other advertisement. Variety magazine named his film the most successful Internet film in 2013.