Posted by Glenn Omura Thanks for your Ziller and Ruby references; I’ll check them out. Yes, I’ve seen the scrapbooking research also. In fact, that industry has just released a new study (that I haven’t seen yet). My theory? My preliminary theoretical thinking is that there are national culture differences in family social decision making driving the differences in picture taking behavior. The systematic behavioral differences among national cultures is important information for companies that market to international venues. Depending on the needs of the company, national buying tendencies may be sufficient knowledge, or segmented (regional, social class, etc.) approaches may be necessary. Editors of marketing journals frequently do not believe there are sufficient cultural differences among the English-speaking countries to allow a prospective author to label his/her research as “cross-cultural” when doing such cross national research. My discovery of systematic differences in picture taking behavior argues that, at least in this one behavioral category, there may be important culturally-driven reasons for consumer behavior. As an academic, I want to know what those drivers are and why they cause these behavioral differences. Any company in the photo industry marketing internationally would likely find the results of my research interesting, e.g., Kodak, HP, Shutterfly, etc. Further, while I claim NO expertise in photo therapy or therapeutic photography, I suspect if I can build and test theory to explain why there are such picture taking behavioral differences, it could have significant impact on your discipline, even if my research is built on national cultures as opposed to individual study. E.g., in one cross-national study, women in Great Britain were found to view children as less central to the family than men, compared to women in four other Western European countries. [Life's Greatest Joy?: European Attitudes toward the Centrality of Children, Rachel K. Jones, April Brayfield, Social Forces, Vol. 75, No. 4 (Jun., 1997), pp. 1239-1269]. What are the implications to photography? Does this mean that British women who view photographs of children will react differently to them than American women due to cultural reasons as opposed to individual dispositions? In the commercial photographic industry, this makes a big difference, as mothers tend to be the primary drivers to taking family pictures in the U.S., and the Jones and Brayfield study begins to provide a teaser of an explanation as to why there is less per capita consumption of picture taking in the U.K. Glenn Omura
on 5/25/2007, 7:40 am, in reply to "Re: Cultural differences in picture taking behavior"
35.8.132.68
As an academic researcher, I am quite satisfied with the methodological rigor of the photo industry studies. The sampling is designed to be demographically representative of the national demographics.
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