Marketing and technology sophistication as key determinants of the demand for 'art house' cinema films: A cross country analysis

Existing studies explore the demand for cinema focusing only on a single country, aiming to assess the probability of a movie's success. From a cross-country perspective, the determinants of consumer demand are relatively unexplored. The film industry may be seen as offering two heterogeneous products falling into two experiential ranges, according to their artistic content ('art house' films), and to the intensity of their special effects ('mainstream' films). This research examines the extent to which the cross country demand for the two given types of films is associated with individual, industrial, and cultural-social-structural factors. Estimation results, based on logistic regressions for a sample of OCED countries, indicate that: (1) cinema tastes diverge into different patterns across countries; (2) larger marketing investments emerge as a strong predictor of the consumption of art house films; and (3) technological level plays a significant role in creating stratified consumption for art house films.