Week 3·The Awareness for the Globalization Force in Taiwan Film Distribution Company

All the linked articles emphasized the importance of being aware of the external factors with positive cases. However, according to my own experience, every company that I’ve interned in avoid awakening such awareness. It is unfair to draw a conclusion that every company in China or Taiwan lack that ability to figure out what is happening around there. But there is certainly a cultural factor, specifically in the media/cultural related industry, that might explain. Obedience and respect system is comparably more restricted in East Asia. People with longer length of service sit in a higher position. It is a tradition to be more reserved about opinion. But under the globalization, it might cause a lot of loss.

As one of the busiest and urbanized cities in the world, Taipei is a cultural, economic center for East Asia. And it is also the place that I spent 5 years living and studying. For a cinephile like me, whose mother tongue is Mandarin, Taipei offers the most qualified film festivals, art commercial films, and most plenty platforms for the niche audiences to communicate with creators. I got an internship from a TOP 3 independent film distribution company in Taiwan. It was amazing to work with them. They love doing brainstorms and meetings. There were a lot of amazing marketing ideas. However, for a leading company in this competitive content market, the leaders rely more on gut feeling rather than on analytical observations. Under the trend of fast-growing film market of mainland China and globalization, they choose not to respond. With data analytics skill more and more convenient and essential to make the decision, they'd rather ignore that.

By far, gut feeling is still quite reliable because the domestic market in Taiwan is relatively smaller compared to the 1.4 billion population of mainland China. To a large extent, experience in film distribution market in Taiwan will correctly direct to a pretty end. But in a long-term, Taiwan will eventually get influenced by globalization, especially by the commercialization in mainland China. There will be a day that gut feeling doesn’t work. Every year China is making more screens and profit from the entertainment industry. 50776, that’s the recent number of screens in China. And China contains the second largest box office after the US. Young generations in Taiwan are more and more drawn to the drama shows produced in China. Restricted by the capital that Taiwan owns, not to mention a large part of investment run to China, the market of films produced by Taiwan shrink drastically.

For a place full of creative talents, there is a huge potential for Taiwan. If film distribution companies would like to apply more attention to data-analytics, they will find clues of the domestic market shifting under the influence of dynamic globalization. If they get prepared for that factors, globalization could eventually benefit Taiwan film market.