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The purpose of this paper is to examine the meaning, in both local and international context, of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB), the first international exhibit of contemporary art in India. Kochi Biennale Foundation (KBF), which administers the KMB, identifies art as a means for transforming society, with a mission to bring global contemporary art to India and to present India’s modern art to the world. The authors further investigate the role of government sponsorship and corporate patronage in funding the KMB, and investigate how resistance through art is key to the KMB’s identity.

This study focuses primarily on published materials relating to the KMB. One of the authors attended the 2016 KMB and interviewed fellow attendees. Additionally, the authors reviewed and assessed social media postings regarding the 2016 KMB.

The authors argue that government sponsorship and corporate patronage are never solely about political or financial power. Rather, a generalized reciprocity among the three entities – corporations, the government and the artists – allows the KMB to flourish. For the artists involved, the KMB, co-founded by activist artists, sustains interest in and awareness of resistance.

Extant literature on biennales is sparse on ways in which these exhibits extend their impact beyond the art world. The authors examine issues such as India expanding its position on the world stage through art, and the implications of political resistance embraced by Indian artists on future directions for the KMB, that have heretofore been unaddressed.

In this paper, the authors argue that fine wines can be considered art and as such can be awarded luxury status. The authors discuss the processes of artification, through which such wines are recognized as art (Shapiro and Heinich, 2012), and heritagization, in which the cultural differentiation implicit in the concept of terroir (the various elements of a microclimate that contribute to a wine's specific attributes) connects a wine to its history and provenance. The investigation focuses specifically on fine wines from Bordeaux and Burgundy, which are renowned worldwide for their depth and flavors. What traits are intrinsic to the definition of art, and what social processes culminate in transforming an entity from nonart to art?

It is a conceptual paper that requires blending several viewpoints to present the authors’ own viewpoints.

This study aims to address the above questions and argues that fine wines, as a source of aesthetic pleasure, are themselves an art form.

The implications for producers of fine wines and other artisanal products seeking to elevate brand awareness are discussed.

The findings of this study are of interest to wine scholars as well as wineries. They provide evidence as to how artification occurs.

While there are papers that address the issue of artification and heritagization individually, the authors bring to bear the importance of both concepts on specific wine regions in France: Burgundy and Bordeaux.

The purpose of this paper is to examine local consumers’ acculturation process as they observe, encounter and shop with an influx of outsiders.

The multi-year qualitative study (involving in-depth interviews and netnography) investigates Hongkongers’ adaptation to encounters with Mainland Chinese shoppers in Hong Kong.

The authors focus on the world of luxury brand consumption, which plays a key role in signaling a newfound status for Mainlanders, and a change in identity construction for Hongkongers. Hongkongers’ acculturation process in response to large numbers of Mainland luxury shoppers includes emotional responses, behavioral adaptation and identity negotiation.

This research has theoretical implications for consumer acculturation theory.

This research has managerial implications for consumers’ luxury consumption experiences.

First, the authors extend the consumer acculturation literature by focusing on the adaptation of locals to visitors. Unlike other acculturation studies that focus on poorer immigrants from less industrial countries to a wealthy nation, the study focuses on local perspectives of elite Hong Kong consumers about Mainland Chinese visitors who are economically well-off but lack cultural capital. Second, emotions are found to be an important component of acculturation and their causes and consequences are analyzed.

Using an index of English‐French Canadian ethnicity developed on the basis of language use in various social communication situations, this study investigates the relationship between ethnicity and use (ownership) of several financial services. A significant result is found in all cases even after removing the effects of income, family life cycle and size.

This study examines subject and self-metaphors in Cantonese in order to understand the impact of self-conceptualization on self-giving in Hong Kong. The bifurcation of the individual in Hong Kong signals the importance of the subject and the relational self in Chinese culture. The word for person (rén) is written as two individuals interacting with each other, so communication between the subject and the relational self has a significant impact on self-giving as evidenced by the most prevalent type of gift – the puritanical one. The mental accounting in this instance reflects the importance given to the consideration of others prior to or simultaneously with rewarding oneself for the successful achievement of a personal goal. Both whimsical and therapeutic gifts are fairly rare and justified in a more elaborate fashion. Indulging oneself by purchasing consumer goods or services for special occasions is acceptable when they are not provided by relevant others, such as close friends or family. Purchasing clothes and shoes for Chinese New Year is not necessarily viewed as a self-gift because this occasion is an auspicious one, requiring the wearer to attire herself in new outfits in order to attract good fortune. Finally, the presence of self-gifts in Hong Kong justifies its inclusion in the gift continuum.

Purpose: This paper uses performance theory to explore how wine-tourism experiences are orchestrated by wine tour guides to encourage engagement of consumers. It describes how such orchestration is built on material elements such as landscapes, architecture, vineyards, production facilities, and wine tastings.

Design/methodology/approach: A multi-layer ethnographic research on wine-tourism was employed. The interviews, observations, and field notes were analyzed through the lens of performance theory. A constant comparative method was used to identify emergent patterns, and a hermeneutic method was used to interpret the data.

Findings: The paper builds on performance theory and delineates the ways in which guides co-create intense experiences with participants. It portrays how tour guides often adjust their theatrical scripts to consumers’ unique needs through creative variations: surprise treats, activities, and personal stories. When guides take pleasure in tours, participants do as well, resulting in memorable co-created experiences. The tours feature processes such as pitching and relation-building techniques that call upon identity, morality, and materiality scripts, which ultimately build a sense of social obligation among participants toward tour guides and winery staff.

Originality/value: From a theoretical perspective, the paper adds value to the discussion of performance in tourism by suggesting that the service blueprint, architecture, and employee training are only part of the story. This paper shows how consumer engagement and interactions between participants, guides, architecture, and landscapes are essential elements of memorable experiences.

Research limitations: Like other studies, there are limitations to our study as well. Our study only included one-day wine tours. A broader investigation of strategic alliances between tour companies and wineries, and how wine tourists experience and sustain a sense of social obligations to the wineries they visit, will provide further insights into how wine-tourism functions as a co-creative emergent form of consumption involving individuals, products, and processes.

Previous studies have found significant differences in consumer attitudes toward marketing between countries and attributed such variations to differences in the stage of consumerism development and cultural values. This study aims to test these competing hypotheses using econometric decomposition to identify the source of such cross‐country variations.

Using survey data of consumer attitudes toward marketing from China and Canada, this study adopts econometric decomposition to examine the cross‐country difference in consumer attitudes toward marketing.

The results show that Chinese consumers have more positive attitudes toward marketing than Canadians and the two countries differ significantly across all predictor variables. However, the results of decomposition suggest that consumerism, individualism and relativism do not have any significant effect on the country gap in consumer attitudes toward marketing, while idealism has a significant coefficient effect.

The study finds different effects of cultural values on consumer attitudes across countries and has meaningful implications for international marketing strategies.

The study investigates the sources of cross‐national differences in consumer attitudes toward marketing using rigorous analyses to improve the accuracy of cultural attribution for international marketing and cross‐cultural consumer research.