What Counts at the Box Office Is the Buzz

The amount of Internet buzz a movie generates is a strong predictor of its box-office take. But it hardly matters whether that buzz is good or bad, according to a study by Yong Liu, an assistant professor of marketing at the Eller College of Business at the University of Arizona.

I’d love to hear from the folks at trend-tracking companies such as Trendum, Intelliseek, Cymfony, and Brandimensions if they a) agree that people’s positive or negative feelings are irrelevant for movies, and b) if this is true, does this pattern hold for other product categories?