International Replication of Cultural Products: A Configurational Approach

The research of replication as strategy has uncovered contingencies governing the replication of routines and business models, however, less attention has been paid to the replication of products that are symbolic rather than utilitarian in nature, or cultural products. This paper aims to fill this gap in academic research by drawing from literature on strategy in cultural industries and analyzing international replication of cultural products. Using a sample of television formats and their adaptations in two different countries, I use fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to find out what configurations of antecedents are consistently associated with successful and unsuccessful replicas. The configurational approach uncovers that replication of cultural products is a balancing act. Results indicate that some adaptation, particularly in categorizing a cultural product as belonging to a certain genre, is crucial. However, adaptation efforts need to be consistent, and if value claims of the product are changed without adapting the genre positioning, the replica runs the risk of failure.