Effects of Ticket Price on Intention to Watch: Focusing on Objective Price and Frame Effect of Musical Types
Authors:   Asia-Europe Perspective Association, Chen Yan , Shin Hyung-Deok , Chung Taeyoung 
Published: December 2024

As quality of life has increased, cultural industry has grown very quickly and people are having more and more interest on cultural values in their daily lives. Consequently, the demand for cultural products, especially musicals, has been increased. Musicals are originated in western countries, but now populated in many countries over the world, becoming a major industry in many cases. In South Korea, musicals has been of interest since the licensed musical ‘Phantom of the Opera’ was staged in 2001 and the share of musicals among performance industry has increased up to 37.9% in 2019. Musicals can be categorized in local, original, and licensed musicals. Local musicals are musicals created and staged in the same country, and original musicals are ones created in a country and staged in different countries with original actors and staffs. Licensed musicals are ones created in a country with local actors and staffs under the license of original creator of the musical. Original musicals are different from licensed musicals in that original ones normally provide translation text services in a board screen because actors sing and speak in a foreign language. Except this, original musicals should be the same as ones staged in the home country, including actors, stage facilities, and staffs, thus the costs of original musicals can be higher than the costs of licensed ones. On the contrary, when local and popular performers act in the licensed musicals, the ticket price could be as high as original musicals just because of the scarcity of the popular performer. Therefore, ticket prices of original and licensed musicals may depend on various elements including local actors’ popularity, inconvenience of reading screen texts, and so forth. This paper analyzed the differential effects of ticket price(objective price and perceived price) on the audience intention to watch licensed musicals and original musicals applying frame effect theory. Empirical findings are as follows: First, perceived price had a positive(+) significant effect on the intention to watch musicals while objective price had no significant effects. Second, the effects of perceived price on watching intention were greater for low objective price musicals than high objective price musicals. In other words, there were moderating effects of objective price(actual ticket price). Third, there were differential moderating effects of objective price depending on the type of musicals. While moderating effects of objective price were significant for licensed musicals, there were no significant moderating effects for original musicals. These findings show that licensed musicals are more price-sensitive. Therefore, reasonable price discounts and events would be effective ways to enhance audience watching intention for licensed musicals. For original musicals, however, price discounts might be ineffective tools for enhancing audience watching intention. Highlighting that the musicals are originals could be a more effective marketing strategy. Overall, our analyses strongly confirmed the frame effect theory.