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The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, it reviews the background to, and development of the special issue call for papers on the topic of “Visual arts marketing in East Asia”; second, it introduces the four papers and commentary in the issue; and third, it considers some of the key areas with a rich potential for future directions of research.

The papers in this special issue comprise of both qualitative (e.g. interviews, observation, case studies) and quantitative (surveys) as well as conceptual issues for policy and artists. Moreover, the articles are interdisciplinary, drawing from art history, cultural studies, philosophy and international relations as well as marketing.

Findings and insights relate to topics such as the structure of the visual arts markets of East Asia, political influences on these arts markets, alternative spaces such as art festivals, ambiance and audience experience in museums and new media initiatives.

The authors believe that all of the papers have implications for future thinking, research, scholarship and practice in the area of arts marketing, particularly for scholars, cultural institutions and artists working in Asia.

As far as the editors are aware, this is the first ever journal special issue on arts marketing in East Asia. In particular, the authors offer some new ideas in thinking about visual arts marketing in Asia as part of this editorial essay, particularly in considering the difficulties for both artists, arts organisations and academics in creating from the “periphery”.

This paper aims to contribute to the literature on value creation by examining value within the visual arts market and arguing for a broader, socio-culturally informed view of value creation.

The authors develop an original conceptual framework to model the value co-creation process through which art is legitimised. An illustrative case study of artist Damien Hirst demonstrates the application of this framework.

The findings illustrate how value is co-constructed in the visual arts market, demonstrating a need to understand social relationships as value is dispersed, situational and in-flux.

The authors problematise the view that value emerges as a result of operant resources “producing effects” through working on operand resources. Rather, adopting the socio-cultural approach, the authors demonstrate how value emerges and is co-constructed, negotiated and circulated. The authors establish the need to reconceptualise value as created collaboratively with other actors within industry sectors. The locus of control is, therefore, dispersed. Moreover, power dynamics at play mean that “consumers” are not homogenous; some are more important than others in the valuation process.

This more distributed notion of value blurs boundaries between product and service, producer and consumer, offering a more unified perspective on value co-creation, which can be used in strategic decision-making.

This paper illustrates that value co-creation must be understood in relation to understanding patterns of hierarchy that influence this process.

While the spatial dimensions of augmented reality (AR) have received significant attention in the marketing literature, to date, there has been less consideration of its temporal dimensions. This paper aims to theorise digital timework through AR to understand a new form of consumption experience that offers short-lived, immersive forms of mundane, marketer-led escape from everyday life.

The authors draw upon Casey’s phenomenological work to explore the emergence of new dynamics of temporalisation through digitised play. An illustrative case study using AR shows how consumers use this temporalisation to find stability and comfort through projecting backwards (remembering) and forwards (imagining) in their lives.

The proliferation of novel digital technologies and platforms has radically transformed consumption experiences as the boundaries between the physical and the virtual, fantasy and reality and play and work have become increasingly blurred. The findings show how temporary escape is carved out within digital space and time, where controlled imaginings provide consumers with an illusion of control over their lives as they re-establish cohesion in a ruptured sense of time.

The authors consider the more critical implications of the offloading capacity of AR, which they show does not prevent cognitive processes such as imagination and remembering but rather puts limits on them. The authors show that these more short-lived, everyday types of digitised escape do not allow for an escape from the structures of everyday life within the market, as much of the previous literature suggests.

The authors argue that corporations need to reflect upon the potential threats of immersive technologies such as AR in harming consumer escapism and take these into serious consideration as part of their strategic experiential design strategies to avoid leading to detrimental effects upon consumer well-being. More nuanced conceptualisations are required to unpack the antecedents of limiting people’s imagination and potentially limiting the fully fledged escape that consumers might desire.

Prior work has conceptualised AR as offloading the need for imagination by making the absent present. The authors critically unpack the implications of this for a more fluid understanding of the temporal logics and limits of consumer escapism.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze the influence that globalization has had on the development of the contemporary Japanese art production. The study also aims to expand the global narrative of Japanese art by introducing concepts behind festivals for revitalization that have been occurring in Japan in recent years.

Guided by Culture Theorist Nira Yuval-Davies’ approach to the politics of belonging, the paper is situated within cultural studies and considers the development of contemporary art in Japan in relation to the power structures present within the global art market. This analysis draws heavily from the research of art historians Reiko Tomii, Adrian Favell, and Gennifer Weisenfeld, and is complemented by investigative research into the life of Art Director Kitagawa Fram, as well as observational analyses formed by on-site study of the Setouchi Triennale in 2015 and 2016.

The paper provides historical insight to the ways that the politics of belonging to the western world has created a limited benchmark for critical discussion about contemporary Japanese art. It suggests that festivals for revitalization in Japan not only are a good source of diversification, but also evidences criticism therein.

Due to the brevity of this text, readers are encouraged to further investigate the source material for more in-depth understanding of the topics.

The paper implies that art historiography should take a multilateral approach to avoid a western hegemony in the field.

This paper fulfills a need to reflect on the limited global reception to Japanese art, while also identifying one movement that art historians and theorists may take into account in the future when considering a Japanese art discourse.

In the contemporary visual art market, for art to be valuable, it must be deemed authentic. In this chapter, we deconstruct the space within which the authentication of art takes place to understand the structural underpinnings of value and its ideological foundations. Through a three-part model, we demonstrate how authenticity in the art market, as a socially constructed concept, relies on the interpretation of cultural brokers who demonstrate recognition of the artist's vision in the work by placing it within an art context and thus legitimising it as culturally valuable. In our spatial analysis, we illustrate the complexity of visual art products and their valuation, demonstrating how authenticity operates through multiple dimensions. Ultimately, we demonstrate that authenticity is an autopoietic market practice which serves to further monopolise power.

In this chapter, we focus on the three examples of ‘destructive’ art by contemporary artists Ai Weiwei, Michael Landy and Banksy to unpack issues of dematerialisation. By adopting the lens of object-oriented ontology, we reveal the hidden agency of artworks as objects. We find that artworks are charismatic objects that are alive to infinite possibilities and interpretations. As this meaning changes over time, we argue that any attempt at measuring or pinpointing cultural value is bound to fail. Instead, we suggest a need for further consideration of how art can operate as a hypo-object, presenting us with new perspectives on the world.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the branding of the Cynical Realist and Political Pop contemporary art movements in China. The trajectory this brand has taken over the past 25 years reveals some of the power discourses that operate within the international visual arts market and how these are constructed, distributed and consumed.

A review of avant-garde art in China and its dissemination is undertaken through analysis of historical data and ethnographic data collected in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

The analysis exposes the ideological framework within which the art market operates and how this affects the art that is produced within it. In the case of Cynical Realism and Political Pop, the art was framed and packaged by the art world to reflect Western liberal political thinking in terms of personal expression thereby implicitly justifying Western democratic, capitalist values.

As an exploratory study, findings contribute to macro-marketing research by demonstrating how certain sociopolitical ideas develop and become naturalised through branding discourses in a market system.

A socio-cultural branding approach to the art market provides a macro-perspective in terms of the limitations and barriers for artists in taking their work to market.

While there have been various studies of branding in the art market, this study reveals the power discourses at work in the contemporary visual arts market in terms of the work that is promoted as “hot” by the art world. Branding here is shown to reflect politics by circulating and promoting certain sociocultural and political ideas.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of blogging (writing online weblogs) in facilitating healing following sexual assault.

To explore how blog writing may facilitate healing and recovery, 30 blog posts written by survivors of sexual assault were analysed using thematic analysis.

The analysis revealed three themes: the aftermath of abuse, the need for support and helping others. In accordance with past research, bloggers frequently did not receive the supportive reaction to a face-to-face disclosure that they desired. Instead, blogging provided a safe environment in which victims could deal with the ongoing challenge of coping with, and recovering from the abuse. Moreover, blogging enabled victims to use their negative experience to educate and support others going through a similar experience, therefore allowing the bloggers to achieve some positive growth.

The results suggest that blogging and reading blogs may be beneficial to victims of sexual assault. Therefore, the findings support the recommendation of blogging by professionals working with victims of sexual assault.

The study presents the first analysis of blogs written by victims of sexual assault to facilitate their healing.