1. MODULE ASSIGNMENT MODULE BMN316
COVERSHEET CODE
PART 1
Student Name: Lam Quang Tuan Duy
Student Number: 1114047
Module Tutor: Cody G. Fuston
Module Title / Assignment Number: Individual research essay
Date Due / Submission Date: 4 June 2012
Extension Date (including authorizing signature):
Word Count (excludes references): 2,748
The submission of this assignment is a statement that it is compliant with the University’s assessment
regulations, and that it does not infringe the University’s research ethics principles.
You are responsible for ensuring that the assignment is submitted in its entirety, and are advised to number
pages in the format ‘Page x of y’ (e.g. Page 3 of 12).
PART 2
For completion by the Module Tutor: Ensure provisional mark is recorded on both copies. Keep blue copy.
Return assignment and white copy to student.
Feedback – with reference to assessment criteria and suggestions for improvement.
Tutor’s signature………………………………………Date…………………………
Second Marker (if appropriate): …………………….Date…………………………
Provisional Mark
Subject to approval by the
Board of Examiners

2. Acknowledgement
For completing this study, I would like to express my great thankfulness for the help from Cody
G. Fuston, who has given me knowledge that has facilitated my work.
Abstract
Movie piracy is mentioned as a serious problem in Vietnam for not only local movie producers
and distributors but also their overseas counterparts. They have been complaining about their
economic loss to movie piracy. Therefore, developing a solution to the circumstance is important
for enhancing their sales. For the purpose, the survey was conducted in Ho Chi Minh City to obtain
an understanding about the consumers’ behavior and attitude towards movie piracy and
consumption of pirated movies, which is expected to help work out an answer to drawing the
consumers’ attention to genuine movies.
Although all of the respondents consume pirated movies, they are aware of the legitimate
aspect of movie piracy. However, they, in general, do have a clear opinion on the ethical influence
of consuming pirated movies. Unsurprisingly, consumption of pirated movies is the dominant form
of movie consumption. Buying genuine copies of movies is not the common practice. The only
common form of consuming genuine movies is going to cinemas. The result acquired from the
survey also provides a clear confirmation that the quality of pirated movies is not as consistent as
that of genuine movies. Moreover, understanding the reasons why the consumers consume
pirated movies instead of genuine ones is essential for developing a solution. Most of the
respondents buy pirated movies because of their undoubted inexpensiveness. The second reason
that leads most of the respondents to pirated movies is that they cannot find genuine copies of
the movies. This means the consumers have demand for genuine movies, but the problem is they
do not find it easy to obtain genuine movies. Another reason for which the respondents consume
pirated movies is they feel convenient to approach pirated movies. It is not difficult to find a
blockbuster movie in a disc stores since they are expansive around Ho Chi Minh City. Another
convenient source is the Internet. Nowadays, a person can access the sea of movie-sharing
websites for a high definition movie by sitting comfortably on a chair. Awareness of the motivation
behind the consumption of pirated movies is likely to help develop a possible solution.

3. Figure 1: Respondent gender.....................................................................................................5
Figure 2: Respondent income....................................................................................................6
Figure 3: Respondent education................................................................................................6
Figure 4: Movie hobby...............................................................................................................7
Figure 5: Frequency of concern about movie genuineness.......................................................8
Figure 6: Disapproval of distributing pirated movies.................................................................9
Figure 7: Consumption of pirated movies................................................................................10
Figure 8: Consumption of genuine movies..............................................................................12
Figure 9: Quality of pirated movies..........................................................................................13
Table 1: Mean rating for opinion on unauthorized distribution of movies.............................10
Table 2: Mean rating for opinion on consuming pirated movies............................................11
Table 3: Mean rating for reasons for consuming pirated movies............................................14
• Introduction
On April 26 2012, the U.S Embassy at Hanoi, Motion Picture Association of America, and
Megastar, a film distributor in Vietnam, projected blockbuster Battleship to celebrate annual
World Intellectual Property Day for fostering respect for intellectual property. The event not only
was to send out a message about protecting intellectual property, including movies, but also
reminded Vietnam’s movie producers and distributors of a challenge that they have been facing,
extensive illegal copies of movies, which have been causing their economic loss. When Universal
debuted its Battleship at cinemas in Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, India, and
Vietnam on April 13 2012, more than one month prior to North America, it looked like
Hollywood’s filmmaker attach importance to Asian markets for their movie sales. Nevertheless,
movie producers and distributors, both domestic and overseas, have been hesitated to distribute
their movies in the form of discs for the market because of flooding pirated discs of movies and
loosely controlled copyright infringement in the country.
There are some common reasons for the consumption of pirated movies. Besides the
government’s ineffective control over distribution of illegal copies of movies, the more affordable
price of pirated movies is apparently an obstacle to enhancement of genuine movie sales. While a
buyer has to pay around VND 70,000 – 80,000 for a genuine DVD movie, he or she just pay VND

4. 50,000 – 40,000 less to have a piracy DVD. In addition to their inexpensiveness, pirated movies can
be found with ease on the Internet. It is not time-consuming accessing online-watching or movie-
download websites, where everyone can share their favorite movies with others, for a high-
definition blockbuster nowadays. Hence, it appears that movie piracy is a tough challenge to
movie producers and distributors in Vietnam. Is there any possible solution to the circumstance?
or what movie producers and distributors can do for a probable improvement? Since there has
been no noticeable academy or business research into the consumption of pirated movies, the
mentioned reasons simply are common assumptions. Therefore, it is necessary to have an
evidential insight about consumers’ attitude and behavior towards consumption of movie piracy,
which would help work out the questions. Accordingly, a research, in the form of survey, into the
fact was conducted in Ho Chi Minh City.
• Method
The research was undertaken through collecting data about movie consumers’ attitude and
behavior towards consumption of movie piracy. A self-completion questionnaire was designed and
then, was handed and emailed 30 movie watchers, who love watching movies, in Ho Chi Minh City.
Snowball sampling was employed to reach a population of 30 movie watchers. Accordingly, several
initial subjects nominated some persons, who also spend much time on movies like them. The
data collected was stored in Microsoft Excel 2007 worksheet and analyzed using the application’s
statistical functions.
• Respondent demographic
The following pie chart shows the gender structure of the respondents. Female makes up 57%
of number of responding participants, while the amount of male respondents is 14% less than that
of female.
Figure 1: Respondent gender
As seen on the chart of respondent income, half of respondent number earns less than VND 4
million per month. Besides, 27% of respondents earn VND 4 – 7 million per month and 10% has
monthly income in the range of VND 7 – 10 million. The rest making up 13% earns more than VND
10 million per month.

5. Figure 2: Respondent income
Furthermore, most of the respondents graduated colleges. While 37% holds bachelor degrees,
40% have finished two-year college. A slight amount of respondents, only 3%, has completed
vocational training. 17% of respondents have high school diploma as their highest level of
education, whereas 3% has not graduated high school.
Figure 3: Respondent education
• Findings
• Movie hobby
The chart below tells us about movie hobby of the respondents. Noticeably, 80% of
respondents see movie watching as a type of entertainment. Learning something through
watching films is a practice of 10% of respondents. 7% of respondents watches films because they
are curious about the films. Just 3% collect movies as a hobby.
Figure 4: Movie hobby
• Concern about the genuineness of a movie
Have movie genuineness been ever a concern to movie buyers? Displaying the frequency of
concern about movie genuineness expressed in percentage of respondents, the chart below serves
as an answer.
Figure 5: Frequency of concern about movie genuineness
Although 47% of respondents reported that movie genuineness never concern them in
consuming movies, over 50% of respondents, with different frequency, think about the
genuineness of a movie in their buying. Particularly, the genuineness of a movie concerns 33% of
respondents on an occasional basis, 10% fairly often, and 10% often. This suggests optimistically
that Vietnamese people somewhat are aware of legal aspect of movie piracy. Still, no respondent
checked “Always” for the question.

6. • Disapproval of distributing pirated movies
The following chart shows the percentage of respondents expressing disapproval of
distributing pirated movies for money and for sharing.
Figure 6: Disapproval of distributing pirated movies
Most of the respondents neutrally do not have an unambiguous answer when 40% answer
“undecided” for commercial distribution and 37% are “undecided” about sharing pirated movies.
For distributing pirated movies for money, 13% “strongly disagree” and 23% “disagree” with the
idea that distributing pirated movies is unacceptable, making up 36% of respondents, who accept
unauthorized commercial distribution of movies. By contrast, remarkably fewer respondents
consider the act unacceptable, 10% “agree” and 13% “strongly disagree”. In other words, 23% of
respondents rate the act in the range of agreement. Meanwhile, 37% of respondents do not think
sharing pirated movies unacceptable, with 17% “strongly disagree” and 20% “disagree”. It is just a
minor amount of respondents see sharing pirated movies unacceptably. 10% answer “agree” while
no one “strongly agree”.
The mean rating on the scale from 1 to 5, where 1 is equal “strongly disagree” and 5 is equal
“strongly agree”, in the following table reveals that the respondents’ attitude is considerably close
to “undecided”. Generally speaking, the common attitude is being undecided about distributing
pirated movies for money and sharing.
Mean rating
For money 2.87
For sharing 2.73
Table 1: Mean rating for opinion on unauthorized distribution of movies
• Consumption of pirated movies
The following chart shows the frequency of consuming pirated movies in percentage of
respondents in four ways: buying from disc outlets, renting from disc outlets, downloading from
the Internet, and watching online.
Figure 7: Consumption of pirated movies

7. Obviously, all of the respondents consume pirated movies. The chart reveals that watching
online is the most common way of pirated movie consumption with 53% of respondents
downloading 1 – 3 times per month, 10% 4 – 6 times per month, and 27% more than 6 times per
month. As a result, 90% of respondents watch pirated movies online every month. The second
common way of pirated movie consumption is downloading from the Internet. 33% of
respondents download pirated movies more than 6 times per month, 20% 4 – 6 times per month,
and 20% 1 – 3 times per month. This counts 73% in total. With 53% of respondents coming to disc
stores for pirated movies, shopping pirated movies at the stores is the third common way.
However, 73% of respondents answer “never” to renting pirated movies from the outlets,
displaying that renting is not a favorable way of movie consumption.
• Opinion on consuming pirated movies
In order to investigate opinion on the influence caused by consuming pirated movies, including
law violation, thieving encouragement, disrespect to author work, and hurting Vietnam’s movie
industry, the respondents were required to rate their opinion on the issues on the scale from 1 to
5, where 1 is equal to “strongly disagree” and 5 is equal to “strongly agree”.
The following table contains mean rating on the scale for each issue, showing that, on average,
the respondents have same undecided attitudes towards the mentioned ethical issues of
consuming pirated movies.
Mean rating
Law violation 3.17
Thieving encouragement 3.17
Disrespect to author work 3.17
Hurting Vietnamese movie industry 3.17
Table 2: Mean rating for opinion on consuming pirated movies
• Consumption of genuine movies
The chart below shows the respondents’ consumption of genuine movies with the extents of
frequency.
Figure 8: Consumption of genuine movies

8. Perhaps it comes as no surprise to learn that buying genuine movies is not a common practice.
The distinctly dominant height of blue columns tells us that consuming genuine movies, especially
in the form of discs, is not a habit of people of Ho Chi Minh City. In particular, 70% of respondents
never buy genuine movies from the outlets, 87% say “Never” to renting from the outlets, and
understandably, 90% of respondents never buy genuine movie from the Internet when online
shopping has not been common for most Vietnamese people. On the contrary, enjoying movies in
cinemas is the only common way of consuming genuine movies. 83% of respondents go to
cinemas 1 – 3 times per month and 13% 4 – 6 times per month. Moreover, it is just 3% of
respondents never experiencing sitting in cinemas.
• Quality of pirated movies
The following bar chart displays the respondents’ opinion on the quality of pirated movies,
including the quality of picture, sound, and package, when compared with that of genuine movie.
It is clearly seen that the quality of pirated movies is inconsistent.
Figure 9: Quality of pirated movies
No respondent finds that picture quality of pirated movies is always as same as that of genuine
movies. Meanwhile, less than 10% of respondents believe that sound quality and package quality
of pirated movies is consistently as same as that of genuine movies. Sound quality and package
quality of pirated movies are rated “always same” by just 7% and 3% of respondents respectively.
Rating picture quality of pirated movies “same but not always”, 47% of respondents agree that
picture quality of pirated movies is just equal to that of genuine movies on occasion. Similarly, 43%
of respondents do not believe that sound quality of pirated movies is as good as that of genuine
movies when rating it “same but not always”. Additionally, there is a quite substantial amount of
undemanding consumers who are not concerned by the quality of movies. 37% of respondents are
not annoyed by pirated movies’ worse quality of picture. Likewise, 37% of respondents can accept
pirated movies’ worse quality of sound. In addition, 43% of respondents rate pirated movies’
package quality “worse but acceptable”. In short, it is asserted that the quality of pirated movies,
though irregularly found as same as genuine movies, is not comparable with controlled quality of
the genuine.
• Reasons for consuming pirated movies

9. Despite the inconsistent quality of pirated movies, large amount of people consume pirated
movies. The next analysis will provide a closer look for the factors that motivate people to pirated
movies instead of genuine ones. 30 respondents was required to rate the importance of each
motivator on the scale from 1 to 5, where 1 is equal to least important and 5 is equal to most
important. The table below shows the mean rating for each reason.
Mean rating
Inexpensive 3.8
Can’t find genuine movies 3.7
Easy to acquire 3.4
Table 3: Mean rating for reasons for consuming pirated movies
Because most Vietnamese people do not earn high monthly income, inexpensive types of
entertainment seem the most preferable. Thus, with the mean rating 3.8, price appears as the
main reason for consumption of pirated movies since pirated movies are more affordable than
genuine ones.
On average, the respondents rate the importance of unavailability of genuine movies 3.7. It
does not look too negative for movie distributors when the unavailability of genuine movies is the
second factor motivating the consumers to pirated movies. In other words, there is still demand
for genuine movies, but it is not easy for the consumers to find them.
The third reason for consuming pirated movies is convenience. In the times of Internet, hot
movies are always found available on movie-sharing websites. Furthermore, the outlets selling
pirated movies are always quicker than the distributor companies in distributing blockbuster
movies. With the massive coverage of pirated movies, the consumers feel easy to get them.
• Conclusion
Watching movies is a very common type of entertainment in Vietnam. However, movie piracy
is an obstacle to movie producers and distributors in terms of sales improvement. The survey gives
an insight about the consumers’ behavior and attitude towards movie piracy, which hopefully
suggests any possible solution to the circumstance. Optimistically, the survey reveals that there is
still demand for genuine movies and movie consumers are aware of legitimacy of movie copyright.
Nevertheless, inexpensive price of pirated movies is the most important factor making consumers

10. buy pirated movies instead of genuine ones. Offering more price choices to consumers is likely to
help solve the problem. A movie distributor can produce, for example, platinum and silver movie
discs with different prices. Platinum discs have better quality than silver ones; therefore, platinum
discs are more expensive than the other is. Classifying the movie quality, the company can satisfy
different types of consumers having different standards of demand. Improving convenience for
the customers is also a fact that movie producers and distributors are supposed to pay attention.
They should expand their disc stores and promote e-selling in order to make their product closer
to and easier to find for their customers.