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The purposes of this editorial are first, to review the background to, and development of, the Special Issue call for papers issued in March 2013 on the topic of “Brands in the Arts and Culture Sector”, second, to introduce the eight papers in the double issue (seven in the Special Issue plus one paper (by Caldwell)) which was submitted to the journal in the normal course and whose topic fits well with the arts and cultural branding topic, and third, to set out a framework designed to facilitate the analysis of individual arts and cultural brands, as well as the directions for future research in the area.

The papers in this Special Issue use a variety of approaches-some qualitative (e.g. ethnography, expert interviews), others quantitative (e.g. laboratory experiment, surveys); others deal with conceptual issues for individual artists and for the arts market.

Findings and insights relate to topics such as: how the “in-between spaces” (e.g. art studios) can be key building blocks of a strong artist’s brand; the importance of western ideas for the Chinese art market; how pro-activeness, innovation, and risk-taking are the three key drivers for the decision to integrate blockbusters as a sub-brand in museum brand architecture; the importance of experiential design for low-involvement museum visitors; the utility of the notion of brand attachment in explaining volunteering; the potential of visual arts branding for general branding theory; the concept of millennial cultural consumers and how to reach them; and celebrity casting in London’s West End theatres.

The authors believe that all of the papers have implications for future thinking, research, scholarship, paedagogy, and practice in the area of arts and cultural branding.

As far as the editors are aware, this is the first ever journal Special Issue on arts and cultural branding. More specifically, the authors have taken the opportunity to present in this editorial essay the “C-Framework” of arts and cultural brands, which offers a new way of thinking about arts and cultural brands − one which can accommodate classical or so-called “mainstream” branding ideas as well as insights from cultural, media, and consumer studies, and other disciplines. This framework can be applied to individual arts and cultural brands as well as to the entire field.

To introduce the concept of cultural equity and provide a theoretical framework for managing cultural equity in multi-cultural markets.

Recent research on the social psychology of globalization, cross-cultural consumer behavior, consumer culture, and global branding is reviewed to develop a theoretical framework for building, leveraging, and protecting cultural equity.

Provides an actionable definition for a brand’s cultural equity, discusses consumer responses to brands that relate to cultural equity, identifies the building blocks of cultural equity, and develops a framework for managing cultural equity.

Research conducted mainly in large cities in North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. Generalizations to less developed parts of the world might be limited.

A very useful theoretical framework for managers interested in building cultural equity into their brands and for leveraging this equity via new products and the development of new markets.

The paper integrates past findings across a variety of domains to develop a parsimonious framework for managing cultural equity in globalized markets.

This paper aims to examine whether brands derive their personalities from their culture of origin, the stereotypes about their cultures of their origin or the cultures of their buyers. It also examines which of a culture’s personality traits are more transmittable to brand personalities (BPs), as well as the consequences of the BP resemblance to the personalities of the brand’s culture of origin and consumers’ culture on BP’s clarity and consumer attachment to the brand.

Hypotheses were developed and tested on survey data from a sample figure of 1,116 US consumers of luxury brands on 23 luxury brands originating from France, the USA, Britain, Italy and Germany. Trait by trait and personality profile analyses were performed using hierarchical model analysis (linear mixed effects models) and Cattell’s (1969) pattern similarity coefficient.

The culture of a brand’s origin accounts for differences of different brands personalities. The personality profiles of a country’s brands are distinct from the BP profiles of brands from other countries. The conscientiousness trait of a culture is the most transmittable to BPs. BPs derive their characteristics from stereotypes of a culture’s personality than the actual personality of the culture. The assimilation of a brand’s personality to consumer’s culture is not supported. The similarity of a BP to both real and stereotypical personality of the culture of the brand’s origin enhance perceived clarity of the BP.

The study’s focus is limited to established luxury brands coming from countries that are the traditional producers of luxuries. Empirical evidence also comes only from American consumers of luxury brands. New luxury brands from countries that have recently emerged as luxury producers need to be included.

Brands retain a significant space to differentiate their personalities beyond the influence of their culture of origin on BPs. With the exception of conscientiousness, personality traits of culture are not automatically inherited or transmitted to the brands. Cultural stereotypes find their way into BPs easier than real personality traits and managers should focus on them. BP matching with the personality of a culture is a good way for managers to increase the perceived clarity of their brands’ personality.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine the culture’s influence on BP using a compatible to the BP construct cultural framework, McCrae and Terracciano’s (2005a) personality of a culture framework. Three cultural meaning transfer processes are examined (cultural inheritance, cultural stereotyping and acculturation to the consumer’s culture) within the same study from a trait-by-trait and a configurational (i.e. personality profile) perspective. The consequences of BP similarity to the brand’s culture of origin as well as consumer’s culture on the BP’s appeal are also assessed.

The essence of “Chinese element” has been pinpointed as the representation of national cultural archetype resource of China, which reflects to the overall power enhancement of China. Applying the Chinese national cultural archetype resource, which will be used for promoting the Chinese Brand internationalization, aims for the consumers' approval with the hope of integrating and spreading the unique cultural advantage of Chinese brand. The recognizing of Chinese brand's cultural archetype in this paper has constituted the basis of Chinese brand's cultural archetype strategy.

Based on the Grounded Theory, this paper has collected and analyzed the value symbols, character images and theme stories of Chinese narrative advertisements and constructed the cultural archetype framework of Chinese brands. This paper makes a comprehensive application of Charmaz's constructivist analysis and the main axis analysis and inspection method advocated by Strauss, with the aim of building a more objective and systematic theoretical framework for the Chinese brand cultural archetype.

In this framework, it revealed: (1) Chinese brand's cultural archetype can be divided into 12 concrete archetypes according to individual's relationship with self, the other, community and nature; (2) Consumers' different ways of self-categorization are attributed as the essential difference among various archetypes. This paper also compared and analyzed the differences between Chinese and Western cultural archetypes from three perspectives, formation of social structure, pedigree of myth and character's feature.

This paper has certain innovative significance to the theoretical construction of the archetype of Chinese brand culture. First, based on the cultural perspective, this paper applied the cultural psychological connotation of archetype to the brand research across culture, which is more conducive to the researchers' investigation of the cultural psychology of consumers in the cross-cultural context? Second, based on the identification and comparative study of Chinese brand culture archetype, it provides a new expansion and supplement for the research on brand internationalization and globalization in emerging countries.

The purpose of this paper is to propose cultural equity as a construct to better understand the characteristics that define a culturally symbolic brand and the downstream consequences for consumer behavior and nation branding in the era of globalization.

This paper is an empirical investigation of the knowledge and outcome aspects of cultural equity with a total of 1,771 consumers located in three different countries/continents, 77 different brands as stimuli, and using a variety of measures, surveys, lab experiments, procedures and consumer contexts.

Cultural equity is the facet of brand equity attributed to the brand's cultural symbolism or the favorable responses by consumers to the cultural symbolism of a brand. A brand has cultural equity if it has a distinctive cultural symbolism in consumers' minds (brand knowledge aspect of cultural equity: association with the central concept that defines the culture, embodiment of culturally relevant values and embeddedness in a cultural knowledge network), and such symbolism elicits a favorable consumer response to the marketing of the brand (outcome aspect of cultural equity: favorable evaluations and strong self-brand connections).

This paper offers a framework that allows marketers to develop cultural positioning strategies in hyper-competitive and globalized markets and identify ways for building and protecting their brands' cultural equity.

This paper advances our understanding of brands as cultural symbols by introducing cultural equity and integrates prior research on brand equity, cross-cultural differences in consumer behavior, country-of-origin effects and nation branding.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of incorporating Chinese elements in global brands on consumer purchase likelihood.

Six global brand products from three categories that utilized Chinese elements are used to test hypotheses. The Total Effect Moderation Model is used to analyze by combining moderation and mediation under a general analytical framework.

The results show that cultural compatibility has direct positive effect, in addition to an indirect effect (through local iconness) on purchase likelihood. Meanwhile, consumer cultural identity is found to moderate the impact of brand local iconness on purchase likelihood.

Evaluation and improvement of cultural compatibility in a global brand that incorporates Chinese elements is recommended for multinational marketers entering Chinese consumer markets. Meanwhile, marketers should pay attention to consumer cultural identity in the market segmentation process.

This paper takes a unique perspective to investigate whether and how global brands can succeed when adding local cultural elements to the product design, packaging and promotion in emerging markets like China.

This paper aims to improve knowledge regarding the complicated relationship among brand cultural symbolism, consumer cultural involvement, brand authenticity and consumer well-being. Although some literature has mentioned the relationship between the above concepts, these relationships have not been confirmed by empirical studies.

Based on the self-determination theory and the authenticity theory, a causal model of brand cultural symbolism, consumers’ enduring cultural involvement, brand authenticity and consumer well-being is developed. The structural equation model and multiple regressions are used to test the hypothesis. The primary data are based on an online survey conducted in China (N = 533). A total of six brands from the USA, France and China were selected as study samples.

The data reveal that brand cultural symbolism has a positive relationship with brand authenticity and consumer well-being; brand authenticity partially mediates the relationship between brand cultural symbolism and consumer well-being; and find a weakening effect of consumers’ enduring cultural involvement on the relationship between brand cultural symbolism and brand authenticity.

The weakening effect of consumers’ enduring cultural involvement on the relationship between brand cultural symbols and brand authenticity should be further verified through experiments and the model should be tested in different cultural backgrounds from a cross-cultural perspective.

The present study offers novel insights for brand managers by highlighting brand authenticity as the fundamental principle that explains the effect of cultural symbolism of brands, consumers’ enduring cultural involvement, as well as eudaimonic and hedonic well-being.

The findings suggest that cultural significance of a brand is closely related to brand authenticity and consumer well-being; however, on consumers with a highly enduring cultural involvement, the effect of brand culture symbolism and brand authenticity is weakened. This is an interesting finding because in this case, consumers may measure brand authenticity more based on the brand actual behavior (e.g. brand non-commercial tendency and brand social responsibility) rather than the symbolic image.

Brand heritage is acknowledged as one of the future priorities in branding research. Adopting it in an international context is challenging. In order to maximise its use it is necessary to know how strong it and the target country's cultural heritage are. Accordingly, the aim of the study is to construct a pioneering operationalisation of both brand and cultural heritage.

The study begins with a discussion on the focal concepts. Definitions are proposed and suggestions for operationalisation put forward. Thereafter, the concepts are applied in an analysis of brand heritage in different countries.

It is suggested that brand heritage is a mixture of the history as well as the consistency and continuity of core values, product brands, and visual symbols. A country's cultural heritage could be conceived of as homogeneity and endurance.

The preliminary operationalisation of the concept needs to be further tested. Nevertheless, the clarification and suggestions offered here should open up opportunities for further research.

The exploitation of brand heritage in international markets is likely to be further accentuated. The operationalisations generated are easy for practitioners to apply, enabling companies to better evaluate what brand heritage means for them and to effectively plan its use in an international setting.

To the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to suggest operationalisations of brand heritage and cultural heritage.

In “the century of culture,” a current drift is toward utilizing cultural heritage branding. Cultural heritage brand referred to in this study means a brand with value proposition based on cultural heritage. As Asian cultures are gathering global focus amid ongoing trend of exoticism and the growth of Asian economies, there is more opportunity especially for Asian brands to benefit from cultural heritage branding. Also, the advantages of cultural heritage branding can benefit fashion brands, considering that designs of great importance in fashion brand's competitiveness can earn creativity and originality from cultural heritage.

Therefore, this study (1) profiles cultural heritage fashion brands based on Asia: Japan, China, and Korea, (2) identifies components of cultural heritage fashion branding by comparative analysis, and (3) identifies characteristics in brand management strategy from the brands, and offer managerial implications for upcoming cultural heritage fashion brands.

This study adopts a case study approach that focuses on Asian fashion brands; Issey Miyake (Japan), Shanghai Tang (China), and Damyeon designed by Lee Hye Soon (Korea). The analytical contents of this research include general profiles (i.e., brand history, brand philosophy and concept, and BI and visual representation), cultural heritage perspectives and brand management perspective (i.e., product, price, place, promotion, and brand extension). Most of the information was retrieved from multiple sources including books, academic papers, brand's annual report, brand official website, news articles, etc.

Overall, this study shows cultural heritage fashion branding can be useful in distinctiveness in positioning and delivering brand value in depth, authenticity, and credibility for customers (Urde, 2007). The findings suggest some managerial as well as cultural heritage-related indications for upcoming cultural heritage fashion brands.

Although common components of cultural heritage fashion branding (i.e., utilization of traditional prototype, emphasis on traditional fabric, and preservation of traditional craftsmanship) were drawn out, achieving optimal balance between tradition and modernity was found critical as well. Managerial guidelines include foreign brand naming, premium pricing, art-related promotions, and extension for a total lifestyle brand. In further research, the type of industry and different country-of-origins can be applied in order to extensively study about the issue of cultural heritage branding.