The internationalization of the Thai movie industry : an analysis of the export competitiveness to the Japanese market

This study was conducted to examine the pattern of internationalization of the Thai movie industry in the case of exports to Japan. Firstly, we adopted the theory of competitive advantage to indentify the factors related to the competitiveness of the Thai movie industry for exports. With the SWOT analysis, the scores in the matrix data of exported Thai movies and its production companies revealed that the empirical data is matched with the theory of competitive advantage and the competitiveness of the Thai movie industry on the supply side have contributed to accelerate the export of Thai movies to Japan. Secondly, we investigated the possible explanations for the pattern of internationalization by other approaches, namely, the Product Life Cycle and the Linder Hypothesis. The analyses revealed that the sudden increase of exported Thai movies abroad during the investigated period coincided with the upward trend or the innovative creation in the product life cycle, as well as the product cycle of the first new interest to movies from a foreign country in the international movie market. The series of successful Thai movies in domestic market in the observed period was also possible due to the structural change of demand in Thailand caused by the economic crisis in 1997. Although the quality increase of the Thai movies was due to both supply side’s competitiveness and demand side’s structural change, however, some of Thai movies could not be exported to Japan due to the cultural discount. Finally, recommendations for public policy include: strengthening the role of scriptwriters which is the weakest factor on the supply side, then reducing the barriers for diversification of the movie contents caused by the censorship, and establishing the so-called Thailand Cultural Foundation to help reducing the cultural discount of the foreign audience in order to form a better understanding of the Thai culture abroad.