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Fu, W. Wayne --- "Cross-Country Comparison of Audience Tastes in Hollywood Movies: Cultural Distance and Genre Preferences" [2012] ELECD 703; in Pager, A. Sean; Candeub, Adam (eds), "Transnational Culture in the Internet Age" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Transnational Culture in the Internet Age

Editor(s): Pager, A. Sean; Candeub, Adam

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857931337

Section: Chapter 16

Section Title: Cross-Country Comparison of Audience Tastes in Hollywood Movies: Cultural Distance and Genre Preferences

Author(s): Fu, W. Wayne

Number of pages: 19

Extract:

16. Cross-country comparison of
audience tastes in Hollywood
movies: cultural distance and genre
preferences
W. Wayne Fu

16.1 INTRODUCTION

Audio-visual products are a cultural good, and the international market-
ing and consumption of the products are not only an economic activity or
trade transaction but also a process of cultural exchange and absorption.
The value and meaning of audio-visual content to local audiences is cul-
turally mediated when the products traverse national borders. How audi-
ences in different countries or cultures receive and select globalized media
products is a vital question, because foreign media content, especially
those audio-visual products serving entertainment purposes, has occupied
an integral part of the daily life of people around the world.
Scholars from various schools of thought have contemplated this issue.
Advocates of the audience reception study propound that audiences
make sense of foreign programs in ways idiosyncratic to local cultures
or contexts rather than simply devouring the content's original meanings
wholesale. Such commentators argue that audiences of foreign programs
construct peculiar impressions and evaluations with regard to globally
shared media products through selective consumption and active nego-
tiation.1 An upshot of the acculturation effect is that distinct populations
would react to the same audio-visual products in heterogeneous manners
contingent on their cultural eccentricities, including social values, taste
preferences, and aesthetic judgments.
Marketing research recognizes the cultural specificity of product con-


1 See Francis L.F. Lee, Cultural Discount and Cross-Culture Predictability:

Examining the Box Office ...