MOTIVATIONS, ATTITUDES AND PREFERENCES TOWARDS MOVIES : A SEGMENTATION OF SINGAPOREAN CHINESE UNDERGRADUATES

Abstract

Singapore boasts one of the highest movie-going rates in the world yet little research has been directed at better understanding the local movie-goers. This study acts as an initial step towards improving the quality of information available on these movie-goers with respect to four main areas: motivations for movie attendance, movie preferences, attitudes towards the movies, and the personality profiles of movie-goers. The sample for the study was drawn from the Faculty of Business Administration (N.U.S.) and comprised only the Chinese undergraduate population due to resource constraints. There were generally three needs that propelled cinema attendance, namely, the fulfilment of Social Needs, Identification Needs, and Entertainment Needs. In general, Comedies were found to be the most preferred type of movies. The males preferred Adventure/ Action movies the most, while the females preferred Musicals the most A cluster analysis of the attitudes towards the movies and the psychographic profiles of respondents revealed three distinct clusters. Cluster 1, The Enthusiastic Movie-goer, is very favourable towards the movies. The bulk of the respondents fell in Cluster 2, The Indifferent Movie-goer, with their responses being generally neutral. Cluster 3, The Detached Moviegoer, had the lowest frequency of movie attendance among the clusters. The results of the comparison of the light and heavy movie-goers were not surprising; heavy movie-goers responded more favourably towards the movies as compared to light movie-goers.