In conclusion, the effect of virus moved from national (outbreak) -regional (revenue) and regional-to-regional to national-regional. The loss of box-office performance kept increasing, which is likely to be result of situation of virus, on-screen schedules of new released films and social distancing policy.
Much to my regret, most of the existing literature in motion picture industry only focused on U.S. market. I deeply hope that my research could arouse people’s attention toward East Asia. It deserves more focus on the power of culture industry in East Asia. Japan first stood up and played the leading role as the ”culture-export centre,” from Japanese dramas to idol groups, J-pop music. Japanese animations are still leading the industry in the world nowadays. Many Taiwanese and Chinese dramas in the early 21st century were sold to other Chinese-speaking regions, but then once declined. Recently, Chinese idols and dramas still gained popularity and are developing their foreign markets. Korean wave, or so-called ”Hallyu” rose later than Japan, but were more diverse in different dimensions. Hallyu brought Korean dramas, K-pop (idol groups and songs), Korean movies and Korean cuisines into foreign countries, and Korean celebrities hold great influences on the Internet and Social Media.
Different aspects may be considered as further studies. First, I observed one main feature in most motion picture markets in East Asia, but not in the U.S. market.
”Idolized” actors, which include actors debuted as idols and actors that are treated as idols, are commonly seen. They could draw people’s attention and lead to intensive discussion before the film or the drama started to play. Fans of them crowded to watch their work, even if they do not actual like the stories. This phenomena is likely
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to affect the structure of estimation framework, and help researchers to discover new facts related to the culture industry in East Asia. I recommend that scholars could further take this perspective into concern. Second, extend the time duration. This study focused on the situation of virus from January 2020 to May 2020. At the time of writing, it is still unforeseeable when the pandemic would terminate. Including numbers of later weeks could further characterize the dynamics of effect from the virus. Third, if the data at cinema-round level is available, one can examine the price and round time difference and check whether the statements in the previous section is true. The last is different specification of holidays. To my knowledge, lunar calendar system had never been taken into concern in similar researches. Whether change in such framework could yield different results is left ambiguous.
This study decomposed the post-outbreak situation into weeks and showed the dynamic effect based on the seasonal amplification effect. Even if most goods in culture industry suffered from seasonality and stable prices, the film market has its uniqueness. Albums, games and books could be purchased online, exhibitions and concerts mostly require the consumers to visit the place by themselves, but films have the substitutability between visiting the cinemas and purchasing the digital version. One may not expect same results in this study apply to other market of cultural goods. Instead, under circumstances that the ways people spend the leisure time are substitutable, one may expect the ”at-home” leisures could give a totally opposite result.
doi:10.6342/NTU202003239
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