Audience Taste Divergence over Time: An Analysis of U.S. Movies' Box Office in Hong Kong, 1989–2004

Abstract

Foreign media products often go through processes of local reception when they travel to another culture. This article provides a quantitative and longitudinal analysis of local reception by focusing on the notion of cross-culture predictability, or the degree to which the performance of a set of media products in a foreign market can be predicted by their performance in the domestic market. Analysis of box office performance of U.S. movies in Hong Kong from 1989 to 2004 finds that the tastes of Hong Kong and U.S. audiences have diverged over the years, a trend particularly robust among certain types of movies.