Finding Nemo (in a sea of options)

: an analysis of catalog size and movie concentration on a Video-on-Demand platform

Abstract

Recently, the media industry has undergone a significant transformation, expandingits offering to include blockbusters and niche titles. Consequently, catalog managers facethe challenge of deciding which products to include on their platforms and striking theright balance in terms of catalog size. This study aims to examine the influence of catalogsize on consumption concentration. To investigate this relationship, we analyze secondarydata from a two-month period provided by a Video-on-Demand platform, during which thecatalog size varied. While previous studies supported that catalog size significantly impactsthe concentration of views, our findings reveal that the relationship between catalog sizeand view concentration is not statistically significant. Instead, we find that factors relatedto the nature of titles, such as genre and position on the platform, have more substantialexplanatory power in understanding viewership concentration. These results emphasizethat there are other critical factors to consider when examining the concentration of views,which outweigh the significance of catalog size.

Date of Award	5 Jul 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Miguel Godinho de Matos (Supervisor)