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The paper aims to offer an approach that allows an analysis and construction of a typology of virtual city brand co-creation practices.

The approach is illustrated by using data collected in regard to the branding of Stockholm; it is based on visual representations expressing the process in which brand co-creation unfolds in a network of different affective modalities.

Virtual representations emerge as expressive trans-locations that obtain communicative qualities in which practices are included and also in which practices are constituted. Practices represent how experiencing is carried out by different stakeholders’ relationships and emotional interactions. They are labeled as contributing, using, esteeming and opposing. These practices constitute analytical abstraction that represent different power plays between the visual and material content of the images, the technologies of production and the display and performance of the virtual.

The focus on practices suggests a way to perform a critical analysis that could be used to research the performative process of co-creating brands in a way that the practices offer signals that can be used to grasp the dynamism of the process. Further, it suggests that the analysis of the practices in the virtual realm has the potential to unfold the material, nonlinear dynamic of communication that resides beyond forms of meaning and cognition.

The offered approach posits an alternative view of co-creation in which the process is uncontrollable by any stakeholders involved; the process might therefore not have a start and end or it could start everywhere in the internet and can transform at any point in space-time.

It contributes to the research on performative place branding by problematizing the issue of agency. It does so by displaying the way in which the process of virtual city brand co-creation could be analyzed based on practices involving the co-construction of visualization and materialization. Analytically, by dealing with virtual representations where practices of brand co-creation unfold, such an approach also helps to unpack the consequences of those practices and can highlight the technologies that are used and the specific qualities of the visual objects enacted.

New technologies represent an important challenge for all sectors across the world, becoming a relevant opportunity for the luxury hospitality industry as well. This study empirically investigates the effects of openness to change and status consumption orientation in influencing luxury hotel guests' perceived usefulness of voice assistants when integrated with their staying. Specifically, we shed light on the potential interplay between these two constructs in shaping guests' perceived usefulness of these devices. Finding suggests that openness to changes and status consumption represents two potentially alternative aspects that managers could leverage to encourage hotel guests' perceived usefulness and vocal assistant devices. This implies that openness to change on the part of luxury hotel guests may be a necessary but not sufficient condition for these devices to be accepted. Rather, luxury hotel managers should also consider the status consumption orientation of their guests.

This paper focuses on the relationships that consumers develop with experiential objects in the context of the Biennale of Contemporary Art Exhibition, viewed from a dialogical and intersubjective approach. The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on the interpersonal relationships that visitors of the Biennale establish with contemporary artworks and to understand the characteristics of these relationships as well as their role in shaping Biennale visitors’ identity narratives.

This research employs an instrumental case study that draws on multiple data sources and examines consumers’ relationships with contemporary artworks.

The case study evidence introduces the relationships that emerged from Biennale visitors’ interactions with contemporary artworks and the identity narratives evolving from these relationships. The findings suggest that Biennale visitors’ relationships with the contemporary artworks take the form of I-thou and I-it relationships. These two modes of interpersonal relationships by entailing different characteristics led investigated visitors to live different types of experiences of contemporary art consumption.

The first limitation of this research is that it focuses on the establishment of interpersonal relationships at the microgenetic level. Further research can provide additional insights by conducting a longitudinal case study. The second limitation is that it provides limited insights into the relationships that are revealed by consumers’ experiences with possessive objects. Future research may examine interpersonal relationships in terms of consumers’ relationships with their brands.

The understanding of visitors’ interactions and relationships with contemporary artworks provides insights into curatorial and marketing practices for such art institutions.

The findings of the current research provide new theoretical insights into the interpersonal relationships that consumers develop with experiential objects and into the distinctive identity narratives that evolve from the establishment of different types of interpersonal relationships.

Prior work underscores the important role of customer advocacy for brands. The purpose of this study is to explore the critical role customers can play as brand heroes. The authors developed and validated a measurement scale composed of properties that are derived from distinct brand hero motivational mechanisms.

The authors conducted one exploratory pilot, using semi-structured interviews, with industry and academic experts, and employed three main studies across varying brands and market settings.

This study explores and empirically demonstrates how the brand hero scale (BHS) is related to, yet distinct from, existing scales of opinion leaders, market mavens, attachment and customer advocacy. The six-item BHS demonstrates convergent, discriminant, nomological and predictive validity across several different brand contexts.

This research extends the extant body of work by identifying and defining brand heroes, developing and validating a parsimonious BHS, and demonstrating how its predictive validity extends both to a range of key advocacy and loyalty customer behaviors.

The study provides provocative insights for marketing researchers and brand managers and ascertains the important role heroes may play for brands in terms of strong customer advocacy and loyalty behaviors.

Building on the theory of meaning, this study shows that identifying and working with brand heroes is of great managerial importance and offers critical avenues for future research.

This paper aims to advance the theoretical knowledge of how manufacturers develop a multisensory value proposition.

An exploratory case study with a global automotive manufacturer was conducted. Personal in-depth interviews with key informants within a manufacturer were performed to obtain in-depth knowledge and insights on how the manufacturer plans and designs a value proposition.

This paper reveals how a value proposition is created from a sensory marketing perspective, which includes orchestrating the sensory experience, harmonising sensory cues to ensure they provide a consistent experience, thereby providing a memorable experience.

Understanding how to offer value might assist managers in tailoring a unique experiential value proposition to position the brand.

This paper proposes a theoretical framework, enriching the understanding of the underlying mechanisms used to create an experiential value proposition. The framework illustrates that harmonising sensory cues based on brand-related stimuli fosters a memorable experience, which enables consumers to (sub)consciously infer value.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a framework for the analysis and evaluation of city brands equity that is firmly anchored to the interdisciplinary characteristics of the city branding research domain.

The study builds upon a database of 217 articles dealing with the phenomena of city branding retrieved from Lucarelli and Berg.

City brands are understood by different scholars as being characterized by both intangible and tangible elements, properly researched adopting a mixture of different methods and endowing certain type of outcomes that concern both the more directly related image and identity of the city as well, to a larger extent, the socio‐political and economical aspects.

The study is based only on published English articles in the last 20 years.

The present paper suggests a framework that is based on the individualization of diverse city brand elements and the relations those have with the reported impact and the methodologies applied to reach this purpose. The framework can be used for both analyzing city brand equity research and practices. The paper contributes to the emerging field of city branding by offering a city brand equity framework that goes beyond the previous attempt in its interdisciplinary breath.

Following Airbnb’s recent turn to the luxury market, this paper aims to explore how Airbnb hosts construct meanings of luxury as enacted in their hosting practices.

Semi-structured interviews with 46 Airbnb hosts were undertaken using purposing sampling.

Study findings reveal that social and personal meanings of luxury manifest in host practice, with “home feeling” representing the epicentre of the luxury peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodation experience.

Although this study draws from host views, it represents a first attempt to empirically examine perceptions and applications of luxury within P2P accommodation. The study provides a conceptual framework which may serve as a point of departure for further research into which luxury service dimensions guests value.

The findings of the study carry implications to the wider hospitality context. Specifically, hospitality practitioners need to reconceptualize luxury hospitality provision to promote a “homotel” accommodation model which highlights the offering of physical and social luxury dimensions in addition to elements of personalized service and home-like hedonic benefits.

The study offers a conceptual framework of the luxury P2P accommodation servicescape, which identifies two distinct luxury offerings that may be informative to both P2P accommodation providers and hospitality practitioners.