When critical and public tastes collide, you might think it’s the critics’ opinions that count. Not so, say researchers at Columbia University and Boccini University in Italy. Regular folks’ taste is actually quite good, researchers found when they measured box-office success, factoring the impact of marketing campaigns.
“Films of the sort that win favorable evaluations of excellence from expert reviewers also tend to win approval from ordinary consumers,” wrote Morris Holbrook and Michela Addis in the Journal of Consumer Research. “Films of the kind that ordinary consumers consider excellent tend to elicit liking and word-of-mouth, or click-of-mouse, recommendations.”
