Organizations are increasingly implementing recommendation systems on their websites. A growing body of research is focusing on how the characteristics of online message content affect consumers’ consumption intentions, taking into account consumers’ static personal information, such as demographics. However, limited research has explored how the social context of consumers and online message content characteristics can affect the consumers’ intention to consume events. To address this gap, the present study investigates the joint effects of consumers' social context and arousal potential cues on their intention to attend cultural events. Based on the Target-arousal level theory, we suggest that people who anticipate solo consumption (i.e., accompanied by no one) will tend to attend cultural events promoted by a low arousal potential cue ("A calming experience."), while those who anticipate social consumption (i.e., accompanied by one or more companions) will tend to attend cultural events promoted by a high arousal potential cue ("An exciting experience”). Furthermore, we argue that anticipated enjoyment will mediate this relationship. The joint impact of the social context and arousal potential cues of a cultural event on consumers' intention to attend, as well as the mediating role of anticipated enjoyment, were demonstrated through two studies. The use of message cues and personalized recommendation algorithms as tools to target consumers and improve attendance rates is discussed. References available upon request.

Recently, the studios in Hollywood introduces mobile games based on the storyline of movies for promotional purpose. With wide exposure of such games, managers could expect raised market awareness and purchase intention toward movies set to be released. Among the movie-themed mobile games, at the same time, not a few games have made financial success as the box office scores of the original movie increases. Thus, managers should deal with the promotional mobile app and the target product simultaneously on the belief of reciprocal relationship between them. If the dynamic relation is true then, finding deterministic factors of mobile game performance has practical significance to make positive consequences for both products. Branded entertainment is defined as “the integration of advertising into entertainment content, whereby brands are embedded into storylines of a film, television program, or other entertainment medium” (Hudson and Hudson 2006). Wise et. al. (2008) states that the advergame, a videogame designed around a brand, is one form of branded entertainment. Additionally, Sood and Drèze (2006) examined film sequels as brand extension of experiential goods based on the reality that Hollywood brands movies. In this vein, movie-themed mobile games can be contemplated as a new practice of branded entertainment. To test the research hypotheses, we collected 43 pairs of a movie and a movie-themed mobile game. Among 300 movies in the annual top 100 U.S. domestic box office chart from 2012 to the end of October 2014, films having more than one promotional mobile game were selected. The data on mobile game were limited to the Apple’s App Store for consistency. For data collection, we utilized multiple archival sources such as boxofficemojo.com, metacritic.com, imdb.com, and appannie.com. The objective of this research is to investigate the impact of movie-themed mobile games on the performance of original movies and the characteristics leading mobile game success. We developed a simultaneous equation system to discover the interdependent relationship between mobile game ranking and movie sales. This study is one of the first empirical investigation demonstrating reciprocal relationship between promotional game app and its target product. The results show that mobile games perform profit generating function as well as promotional function, thus suggesting managers to deal with mobile game more strategic way.