Market orientation, corporate governance, and organizational learning: the rise of Korean popular culture

Investors and managers of firms producing cultural products have long confronted the problem of low success rates. This study proposes a model arguing that corporate governance, in addition rates organizational learning, improves market orientation, which in turn influences the performance of cultural products. To support our model, this study collects 607 music videos produced by South Korean and Taiwanese entertainment companies. We measure their market orientation via the simple market research technique of data mining and examine the degree to which the characteristics of firm products are consistent with the results of market research. We find that market orientation is positively related to product performance. We also find that both corporate governance and organizational learning improve market orientation. Building on past research that has exclusively conceptualized market orientation as firm capabilities that could be improved by organizational learning, this study further suggests that agency problems between investors and artist managers hinder firms’ market orientation, and could be mitigated by strong institutions in corporate governance.