Internationalization of the women's magazine industry in Taiwan context, process and influence

Abstract

This paper looks at the impact of internationalization on the women's magazine industry in Taiwan. It addresses the growing concentration of ownership and control at the international level, how the subsequent standardization has affected advertising, and the implications this has had for the magazines’ readership. The influx of international magazines to the Taiwanese market since the mid 1980s saw a marked shift of advertising toward transnational brand products. With this in mind, content analysis was conducted to compare advertising in local magazines with that of locally available editions of international titles. The domestic titles, New Woman and Nong‐nong and the Chinese editions of Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire were analysed for 1995. The results indicate that commercial forces have resulted in Taiwan's women's magazines presenting the international stereotype of women in aesthetic roles.