Viewing Modus and Media Franchise Engagement ∗ Current version : November 2019

We investigate the relationship between viewing modus (low and high intensity viewing) and consumers’ engagement with media franchises in two areas: personal and interactive engagement. The former involves consumers’ adoption and consumption of franchise extensions and the latter concerns consumers’ content generation related to a focal media product they watched. Our novel data come from an online anime (Japanese cartoons) platform containing individual-level information on consumers’ anime watching behavior and their user-generated content. We find that the effects of high intensity viewing on personal engagement critically depend on the availability of a franchise extension at the time of watching the focal media product and the type of franchise extension (sequels versus other types of extensions). For interactive engagement, our results show that high intensity viewing is associated with lower submission rates but higher valence of anime ratings, the most prevalent form of UGC on the platform. Furthermore, we explore five common sources of heterogeneity: age, gender, geography, usage, and experience. We discuss managerial implications for TV networks and online streaming services regarding the timing of content release.