Between Familiarity and Unfamiliarity : Users' Perception and Intention of Watching Netflix Artwork

Abstract

Background Personalization service through AI and ML (machine learning) plays a significant role in the success of Netflix. Netflix's personalized recommendation service is not only applied to the content but also to Netflix artworks. The first thing users encounter when choosing content at the OTT service platform is artwork. Users explore and formulate choices with the artwork. The artwork is the first impression to attract users and an important factor affecting the decision what to watch. This study seeks to determine viewer’s perception and intention of watching of Netflix's personalized artwork. We speculatedwondered whether Netflix artwork's personalization replaces the movie poster's image too familiar to attract attention or if it overlooks the anchoring and the primacy effect's benefits.

Methods We hypothesized and surveyed whether there is a difference in viewing intention according to the type of artwork. In addition, we set a hypothesis to see if the more we accept personalized artwork as positive and negative unfamiliarity, the more it affects the viewing intention. We chose Parasite, which is well known to the public and The Devil All the Time as a less well-known content. To answer these hypotheses, we surveyed a total of 152 respondents. The results of the survey were statistically verified through one-way analysis of variance and simple regression.

Results For Parasite , the main poster type's artwork derives users' intention of watching by anchoring effect and primacy effect. On the other hand, personalized artwork produced by converting genres or focusing on supporting actors negatively affected their intention of watching. Meanwhile, for The Devil All the Time, the main poster was less known to users in Korea. Therefore, there was little anchoring and primacy effect since users did not recognize the main poster as representative images of the movie. In this case, not only the main poster type, but also the artwork with the leading actor's image, and the artwork with the overall atmosphere of the movie can draw the users' intention of watching. In both films, the more the respondents felt the negative unfamiliarity of the artwork that gives them the impression that the movie seems like a formula film, the less intention of watching.

Conclusions It was revealed that personalized artworks do not only attract viewers' positive perceptions and can interfere with the viewer's intention to watch. Based on this, it is expected that the study will help to produce artwork for the OTT service.