Can Emerging Markets Tilt Global Product Design? Impacts of Chinese Colorism on Hollywood Castings
研究中国消费者对浅肤色的审美偏好是否影响好莱坞电影选角，发现针对中国市场的电影更倾向于选用浅肤色明星，表明新兴市场正改变全球产品设计。
In various cultural and behavioral respects, emerging market consumers differ significantly from their counterparts of developed markets. They may thus derive consumption utility from different aspects of product meaning and functionality. Based on this premise, we investigate whether the economic rise of emerging markets may have begun to impact the typical one-size-fits-all design of many international product categories. Focusing on Hollywood films, and exploiting a recent relaxation of China’s foreign film importation policy, we provide evidence suggesting that these impacts may exist and be nonnegligible. In particular, we show that the Chinese society’s aesthetic preference for lighter skin can be linked to the more frequent casting of pale-skinned stars in films targeting the Chinese market. Implications for the design of international products are drawn. Data and the online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2018.1089 .