Cultural and Economic Impacts on Global Cultural Products: Evidence from US Movies

Abstract

Existing international product diffusion studies have identified economic and cultural factors that influence consumers' acceptance of new products, but they have not fully examined these factors' roles in the international diffusion of global cultural products. The authors examine country-level economic and cultural factors that influence consumers' acceptance of new global cultural products across countries. Using 846 recent U.S. movies' box office performances in 48 national markets as the empirical context, the authors obtain the following key novel findings on product sales: (1) an inverse U-shaped impact of economic development status, (2) a positive impact of the cultural compatibility of the product and the market, and (3) a U-shaped impact of intercountry cultural distance in the presence of cultural compatibility and a decreasing linear impact of cultural distance in the absence of cultural compatibility