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1. Introduction
For decades, Hollywood movies have dominated the world cinema market (Lee, 2006). However, as the domestic market (i.e. that of the USA and Canada) remains stagnant and the importance of international markets (i.e. those of China and Japan) has increased over the past decade, the dominant position of Hollywood and the sustained strong commercial success of the North American market have gradually weakened. Specifically, the domestic box office in the USA and Canada fell two percent to $11.1bn, down $300m, in 2017, but the international markets grew seven percent to $29.5bn, increasing $2.1bn in 2017. According to the Theatrical and Home Entertainment Market Environment (THEME) Report 2017, published by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the global box office in 2017 reached a new record high of $40.6bn, up 5 percent from 2016. International box office revenue accounted for 73 percent of the global box office total, and their share against the US domestic market has been increasing rapidly. It is worth noting that this is largely due to growth in China. The Chinese box office ($7.9bn) now represents the largest international market, growing by 20 percent in 2017 alone. China is becoming the world’s top film market, as ticket sales there overtook those of North America in the first quarter of 2018 (Frater, 2018). Furthermore, for the Chinese film market in 2017, Chinese-language movies accounted for 53.84 percent of the total box office revenue, while non-Chinese movies (imported movies) together totaled about 46.16 percent, which implies the Chinese film market still has considerable space for growth and opportunities to offer the international film industry. However, the success of Hollywood movies in the Chinese market faces challenges because Chinese consumers have different values, preferences and tastes based on their cultural background.
Cultural differences have been a crucial issue in international marketing; they have been identified in consumer responses to new product rollout decisions (Griffith et al., 2014) and switching costs (Pick and Eisend, 2016), adoption behavior (Ashraf et al., 2014; Zhang et al., 2018), consumer satisfaction processes (Morgeson III et al., 2015), and customer lifetime value (Kumar and Pansari, 2016). Meanwhile, the recent growth of online rating reviews has made electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) one of the most powerful...