Antecedents of Distribution Intensity and Box-Office in Taiwan’s Film Industry: Insights from Transaction Cost Analysis, Agency Theory, and Network Perspective

Distribution intensity is important for a marketer, because it influences a company’s market coverage, market share, and sales volume. In practice, the degrees of distribution intensity vary remarkably among manufacturers. Some studies have explored how such differences occur from the nature of products and consumer characteristics, brand strategies, and related channel practices, however, no study has explored these differences from objective economy factors and subjective relationship aspects so far.
This study investigates distribution intensity from transaction cost analysis, agency theory, and social network perspective, and develops a conceptual framework. Data collected from movie distributors in Taiwan’s film industry are used to test this conceptual framework. Empirical results show that asset specificity has a significant negative relationship with distribution intensity, and information gathering, measurability and social relations have significant positive relationships with distribution intensity. Besides, distribution intensity has a significant positive relationship with performance. Some extended hypotheses related to transaction cost analysis, agency theory, and social network perspective are all supported by the empirical results.
Key words: distribution intensity, transaction cost analysis, agency theory, and social network