The topic of content preferences is very broad and could be discussed endlessly since every country and every nation has its own peculiarities and preferences. Consumer habits lead to concrete consumer behavior. And still, anyway, sometimes marketing experts call consumer behavior a “black box” since reasons which lead to decision made by consumer are still absolutely unclear. Same happens in the world of TV where the main product is content which people watch. There are many factors which influence content preferences as there are plenty of factors for consumer behavior in the market.
Let`s start with inevitable and cement part for economic consumer behavior for every nation. Of course, the history of a nation and its country influences TV content preferences and attitudes towards content. For example, by the end of the 18th century, cricket has developed into the national sport of England. The expansion of the British Empire led to cricket being played overseas in the countries where power of the British Empire was high. This is the reason why in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh you can find many cricket fans and crowds of people watching cricket.
Lifestyle also dictates consumer attitude towards content. Asia is fond of food and cooking. This is a common leisure time in Asia to cook in a team of friends. So, Asian Food Channel received high ratings in a short period of time because of its rich food content full of recipes and cooking shows.
Latin America is a land of love stories and big family dramas. So the country is famous for its TV serials, endless soap operas and exciting movies full of passion or hate. Indian films are not films without bright fruitful dancing shows and a love story with a happy marriage in the end. People are used to this behavior, this is the way they celebrate holidays and this is well reflected in Hindi content and in a big amount of Hindi channels – the world of Bollywood.
Besides news channels, general entertainment channels such as Star Plus (with sitcoms and TV series), religious channels and cooking channels seem to be popular in Middle East. While international news broadcasters do not command much attention in the Middle East countries, internationally-owned entertainment and sports channels such as Star, ZEE and Ten Sports are highly appreciated among the audience.
For sure, religion matters and, thus, one of the latest movies “The Wolf of Wall Street” was prohibited in Thailand, Malaysia and some Arabic countries due to some cruel scenes taking place in movie.
In general, it is curious fact that not depending on different content preferences all over the world there are some most popular genres which never change in a lifetime. These are sitcoms, entertainment and music, movies. It means that Hollywood blockbusters are extremely popular anywhere in the world; among content genres, plots having the highest level of entertainment stand out among others and make you run home and watch your favorite sitcom. This is a source of multibillion revenues and the reason of development of Hollywood sitcoms production.
