Previous studies of the market for cultural offerings have repeatedly found support for a significant-but-weak relationship between expert judgment (appraisals of excellence by professional critics or journalistic reviewers) and popular appeal or market success (assessments of liking by ordinary consumers or measures of acceptance by the mass audience). Recent work has suggested that this “little taste” phenomenon may result from a mediating role played by ordinary evaluation (judgments of excellence by non-expert consumers) in diluting the association between expert judgment and popular appeal. However, various weaknesses have characterized the derivation of this finding–for example, problems due to difficulties with sequential timing, non-independence of measurements, and the contamination of taste-based responses by market- or marketing-related influences. The present investigation of new data on motion pictures addresses these concerns in ways that bolster the case for claiming that–when controlling for market(ing)-related factors–consumers display aspects of “good taste” via an indirect chain of positive associations from expert judgment to ordinary evaluation to popular appeal.
Taste versus The Market: An Extension of Research on The Consumption of Popular Culture
ADDIS, MICHELA
2007
Abstract
Previous studies of the market for cultural offerings have repeatedly found support for a significant-but-weak relationship between expert judgment (appraisals of excellence by professional critics or journalistic reviewers) and popular appeal or market success (assessments of liking by ordinary consumers or measures of acceptance by the mass audience). Recent work has suggested that this “little taste” phenomenon may result from a mediating role played by ordinary evaluation (judgments of excellence by non-expert consumers) in diluting the association between expert judgment and popular appeal. However, various weaknesses have characterized the derivation of this finding–for example, problems due to difficulties with sequential timing, non-independence of measurements, and the contamination of taste-based responses by market- or marketing-related influences. The present investigation of new data on motion pictures addresses these concerns in ways that bolster the case for claiming that–when controlling for market(ing)-related factors–consumers display aspects of “good taste” via an indirect chain of positive associations from expert judgment to ordinary evaluation to popular appeal.
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