C. Samuel Craig, William H. Greene, and Susan P. Douglas
Executive Summary
Culture has a profound influence on all aspects of behavior. Cultural norms establish rules of conduct and shape values, beliefs, and preferences. Although the impact of one culture, particularly elements of American culture, on other cultures is evident and highly visible throughout the world, there have been few studies that attempt to assess this phenomenon systematically. In this article, Craig, Greene, and Douglas examine the extent to which both the cultural content of a product and the context (country) in which it is sold affect sales. The authors selected film for investigation because each film is a highly complex product that is rich in cultural meaning and very much a creation of the culture in which it is developed.
Hypotheses focus on the three key dimensions of culture: values and beliefs, cultural artifacts, and language. Craig, Greene, and Douglas test hypotheses with a hierarchical regression model specifying the impact of both film-level and country-level independent variables on box office receipts. The dependent variable consisted of foreign box office receipts in eight different countries for the top 50 U.S. films for six consecutive years. The independent variables consisted of two groups: (1) film characteristics (U.S. box office revenue and film genre) and (2) country characteristics (cultural distance from the United States, degree of Americanization, and language).
The results indicate that films released in countries that were culturally closer to the United States were likely to perform better. Closely related to cultural distance is the extent to which the country has embraced elements of American culture. The number of McDonald’s outlets per capita provided some indication of the extent to which a population has accepted aspects of American culture. Films performed better in countries that had more McDonald’s outlets per capita. Related to cultural distance was whether the film was released in an English-speaking country. When films were released in other English-speaking countries, they performed better than when they were released in non-English-speaking countries. Craig, Greene, and Douglas included genre in the equation to account for differences in the nature of the cultural content. Seven of the genres had a significant impact on how films performed in foreign countries.
Craig, Greene, and Douglas show that culture is an important factor influencing the success of one type of product in foreign markets. Although the data for the present study are related to the film industry, the findings have broader implications for products that have substantial cultural content, including other forms of entertainment, food, clothing, and home furnishings. Managers in such categories are likely to find receptive audiences in countries that are culturally and linguistically similar to the home country.
Biography
C. Samuel Craig received his BA from Westminster College, his MA from the University of Rhode Island, and his doctoral degree from the Ohio State University. He is interested in global marketing strategy, cross-cultural consumer behavior, and methodological issues in international marketing research. He is a consultant to major pharmaceutical firms and an expert witness in litigations involving trademarks and other marketing issues. His work has been published in Journal of International Marketing, International Marketing Review, and Journal of Internet Commerce. Professor Craig continues to explore methodological issues in international marketing research. The third edition of his book (with Susan Douglas), International Marketing Research, was just published. He is also conducting research on other aspects of the entertainment industry.
William H. Greene is Professor of Economics and Entertainment and Media Faculty Fellow in the Department of Economics at the Stern School of Business, New York University. His fields of interest are applied econometrics, production economics, panel data, and economics of the entertainment industry. His teaching at New York University since 1982 includes subjects such as Econometrics, Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, and Economics of the Entertainment and Media Markets. He was Chairman of the Economics Department at Stern from 1995 to 2001 and Director of the doctoral program from 1988 to 1994. Previously, he was Professor of Economics at Cornell University (1976–1982). He has been a visiting lecturer at Oxford, Indiana, University of York, the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank, and University of Lund and has consulted for Resource Consultants Inc., Ortho Biotech, National Economic Research Associates, the U.S. Navy, the World Health Organization, and Econometric Software Inc., among others. He is the author of the software LIMDEP and NLOGIT; the textbook Econometric Analysis; and approximately 75 articles in applied econometrics, econometric methods, transportation, health economics, and forth, in journals such as Econometrica, Journal of Econometrics, Review of Economics and Statistics, Transport Research, Health Economics, Econometric Reviews, Empirical Economics, Journal of Political Economy, and American Economic Review. He is also Editor in Chief of Foundations and Trends in Econometrics and Associate Editor for Journal of Productivity Analysis and Journal of Economic Education.
Susan P. Douglas obtained her BA and MA in Economics from the University of Manchester and her doctoral degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Her primary research interests are in the areas of international marketing research, cross-cultural consumer behavior, and global marketing strategy. She has recently published in International Journal of Research in Marketing, and the third edition of her book (with C. Samuel Craig), International Marketing Research has just been published. She is currently exploring the factors that underlie the spread of U.S. products and influence to other countries and the interest and behavior of world-minded consumers.
Journal of International Marketing, Vol. 13, No. 4, December 2005
View Table of Contents.