The changing of the Hong Kong idols popularity in 80’s to 90’s and now

From the 80’s to 90’s, it was the great moment of Hong Kong entertainment industry. Hong Kong’s idols were very popular, because of their competent, for example, Leslie Cheung Kowk Wing. He was not only popular in Hong Kong, but also in Asia and the world. Leslie Cheung was the first foreign artist to hold 16 concerts and got the best artist in Japan. Also, he was the record holder as the best-selling C-pop artist in Korea. His record had not broken by others.

However, it changes, the idols in Hong Kong are not popular as than the Japanese and Korean idol nowadays. In can be seen from the charts 2.1that the about half of our interviewees like to listen the Korean music. 36% of them like the Japanese music. But only 16% of them like Canton pop. In addition, there are only 11 of interviewees, their idols is from Hong Kong. However, compare to Japan and Korea, there are around 39 of interviewees’ idols from Japan and Korea (Figure 2.2). The most interviewees said the reason why they like Japanese idols and Korean idols more Hong Kong idols is that they were multifaceted development (Figure 2.3). Most of idols from Japan or Korea, they are not just only well in singing, but also well in dancing, drama, films and host. For instance, Arashi and Super Junior are the popular idol group from Japan and Korea. However, look back to Hong Kong idols nowadays, the idols seldom doing the music, film, drama and host at the same time. They just only having one talent, this is not enough to attract fans and satisfy their demand nowadays. The second is idols’ image. Most of Korean and Japanese idol are quite healthy. However, Hong Kong idols’ image not much good, like Edison Chen, because of his sex photo scandal in 2008. And other example is Jill M. Vidal, who arrested in Japan 2009 because she took drugs.

Regarding to this surveyed, from Figure 2.4, the majority of interviewees are familiar with Korean and Japanese singers more than the local Hong Kong singers. Therefore, some of local company would invite them as the spokesperson to attract their target audiences, like MTR and Genki Sushi.

The culture influences in attractive to the foreign visitors

From the figure 3.1, it can be shown that around 70% of interviewees are been Japan or Korea and bought their things because the Japanese or Korean TV programs and the pop stars. According to the Peter Kim, who is the marketing department of the Seoul Metropolitan Government, the numbers of visitors are increasing from this past five year. Last year, Korea had 10 million visitors from oversea. The visitors bring an economic contribution to society. There are around 75% of visitors are coming from the Asia. Besides the increasing of visitors, the idols industry certainly makes the economic growth through the CDs, concert tickets and magazines in the Japan and Korea. Looking back to the Hong Kong, according to our survey, almost 56% of our interviewees are preferred to choose Japan as their first choice to visit, if they were foreign visitors. The second choice is Korea, around 34% of interviewees choose it. Hong Kong only 10% of them would choose it (figure 3.2). We found that it is because Hong Kong lacks of representative to represent Hong Kong to attract the foreign visitors came to Hong Kong.