An End To Snobbery? Ordinary People Have Surprisingly 'Good Taste'

However, a new study by researchers at Columbia University and Boccini University, Italy, argues that when controlling for marketing campaigns, regular consumers show more "good taste" than previously thought.

The most common working definition of "good taste" utilizes the judgment of experts, who have honed their understanding of a particular cultural field through a long period of training. Empirical studies using this standard of taste have tended to find statistically significant but rather weak associations between expert judgment and market success with a mass audience.

However, instead of looking at box-office success, which can be contaminated by marketing campaigns as well as sharp drop-offs after opening weekend, Morris B. Holbrook (Columbia University) and Michela Addis (Bocconi University, Italy) analyze reviews of movies done by non-professionals, including those on the popular Web site IMdb.com. They find a close association between expert opinion and the opinions of ordinary people.

"When using sequential and independent measures and when controlling for marketing-related aspects of a film's commercial impact -- our findings support the conclusion that ordinary consumers show "good taste" to a degree not hitherto recognized," the authors write. With proper controls for the contaminating influences of market success they find that "Films of the sort that win favorable evaluations of excellence from expert reviewers also tend to win approval from ordinary consumers and that films of the kind that ordinary consumers consider excellent tend to elicit liking and word-of-mouth or click-of-mouse recommendations."

Morris B. Holbrook and Michela Addis, "Taste Versus the Market: An Extension of Research on the Consumption of Popular Culture." Journal of Consumer Research: October 2007.