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This paper aims to investigate the ways in which “non-collaborative co-creation” can affect brand equity as perceived by independent observers. It reports a study of the different effects on that perception attributable to non-collaborative co-creation that takes the form of either “brand play” or “brand attack” and is executed either by established artists or mainstream consumers.

A 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment (brand play versus brand attack; consumer versus artist) measured observers’ perception of brand equity before and after exposure to purpose-designed co-created treatments.

Non-collaborative co-creation has a negative effect on observers’ perceptions of brand equity and brand attack, causing a stronger dilution of brand equity than brand play. Artists either mitigate the dilution or have a positive effect on those perceptions.

Future research could usefully investigate the relative susceptibility of brands to non-collaborative co-creation, the effects on brands of higher complexity than those in our experiment, exposed in higher-involvement media, and the effects of more diverse forms of co-creation.

Brand managers must recognise that co-creation carries considerable risks for brand equity. They should closely monitor and track the first signs of non-collaborative co-creation in progress. It could be beneficial to recruit artists as co-creators of controlled brand play.

This study offers a more complete insight into the effect of non-collaborative co-creation on observers’ perceptions of brand equity than so far offered by the existing literature. It connects the fields of brand management and the arts by investigating the role and impact of artists as collaborative or non-collaborative co-creators of brand equity.

The twofold aim of this theory-building article is to raise questions about the ability of queer cinema to transform market culture and ideologies around gender and sexuality. First, the authors examine how the very capitalization of queer signifiers may compromise the dominant order from within. Second, the authors address how brands possibly can draw on these signifiers to project authenticity.

Through visual methods of film criticism and the semiotic analysis of three films (Moonlight, Call Me By Your Name and Portrait of a Lady on Fire), the authors outline some profound narrative tensions addressed by movie makers seeking to give an authentic voice to queer lives.

Brands can tap into these narrative attempts at “seeing the invisible” to signify authenticity. False sublation, i.e. the “catch-22” of commodifying the queer imaginaries one seeks to represent, follows from a Marcusean analysis.

In more practical terms, “seeing the invisible” is proposed as a cultural branding technique. To be felicitous, one has to circumvent three narrative traditions: pathologization, rationalization and trivialization.

In contrast to Marcuse's pessimist view emphasizing its affirmative aspects, the authors conclude that such commodification in the long term may have transformative effects on the dominant ideology. This is because even if something is banished to the realm of imagination, e.g. through aesthetic semblance, it can still be enacted in real life.

This paper aims to contribute to understandings of the dynamics of marketplace exclusion and explore the benefits of a performative approach to knowledge production.

Interactive documentary theatre is used to explore the pressing issue of marketplace exclusion in a deprived UK city. The authors present a series of three vignettes taken from the performance to explore the embodied and dialogical nature of performative knowledge production.

The performative mode of knowledge production has a series of advantages over the more traditional research approaches used in marketing. It is arguably more authentic, embodied and collaborative. However, this mode of research also has its challenges particularly in the interpretation and presentation of the data.

The paper highlights the implications of performative knowledge production for critical consumer learning. It also explores how the hitherto neglected concept of marketplace exclusion might bring together insights into the mechanics and outcomes of exclusion.

While theatrical and performative metaphors have been widely used to theorise interactions in the marketplace, as yet the possibility of using theatre as a form of inquiry within marketing has been largely neglected. Documentary theatre is revealing of the ways in which marketplace cultures can perpetuate social inequality. Involving local communities in the co-production of knowledge in this way gives them a voice in the policy arena not hitherto fully addressed in the marketing field. Similarly, marketplace exclusion as a concept has been sidelined in favour of marketplace discrimination and consumer vulnerability – the authors think it has the potential to bring these fields together in exploring the range of dynamics involved.

Delivering patient-centered healthcare is now seen as one of the basic requirements of good quality care. In this research, the impact of the perceived quality of three experiential dimensions (Physical Environment, Empowerment and Dignity and Patient–Doctor Relationship) on patient's Experiential Satisfaction is assessed.

259 structured interviews were performed with patients in private and public hospitals across Italy. The research methodology is based in testing mediation and moderation effects of the selected variables.

The study shows that: perceived quality of Physical Environment has a positive impact on patient's Experiential Satisfaction; perceived quality of Empowerment and Dignity and perceived quality of Patient–Doctor Relationship mediate this relationship reinforcing the role of Physical Environment on Experiential Satisfaction; educational level is a moderator in the relationship between perceived quality of Patient–Doctor Relationship and overall Satisfaction: more educated patients pay more attention to relational items. Subjective Health Frailty is a moderator in all the tested relationships with Experiential Satisfaction: patients who perceive their health as frail are more reactive to the quality of the above-mentioned variables.

Physical Environment items are enablers of both Empowerment and Dignity and Patient–Doctor Relationship and these variables must be addressed all together in order to improve the value proposition provided to patients. Designing a hospital, beyond technical requirements that modern medicine demands and functional relationships between different medical departments, means dealing with issues like the anxiety of the patient, the stressful working environment for the hospital staff and the need to build a sustainable and healing building.

This paper aims to present an interdisciplinary approach for the development and design of place brands, which goes far beyond communication strategies and advertising campaigns. The so-called “Brand-driven Identity Development of Places” (short: BIDP) approach provides a structured three-phase model that can serve as a practical guide for the development of commercial, touristy, urban and rural places.

Longitudinal collaborative action research over a time span of 20 years plus extended case study research supported the evolution of the BIDP approach.

BIDP is a circular three-phase model starting with the definition of the intended place brand identity, which in Phase 2 becomes translated into concrete touchpoint experiences along the main constituents of the place, and finally materialising into the new place format. The case study of the City of Innsbruck is prototypically used to illustrate the application of the designed approach and to report achieved results.

Place brand development based on translating socio-cultural meanings into touchpoint experiences to materialise and align place constituents is opening up new avenues to initiate and govern place development. At present, the approach is based on case studies in the western region of Austria and South Tyrol.

The three-phase model represents a practical tool for place brand managers, who want to renew and to develop their place format in a structured way. The BIDP model can be applied for all forms of places.

Foremost, the described place branding collaborations reassure the proposition of Olins (2002) and Schmidt (2007) that place branding is a crucial internal project that unites groups of people around a common strategic vision providing sense and direction besides reaching out to the traditional customer–stakeholder audience.

A structured model for brand-driven place development, which evolved during 20 years of longitudinal collaborative action research with executives and representatives of commercial, touristy, urban and rural places, BIDP locks into anthropological research findings where cultural meanings are considered as the main source for the construction of brand identities.

This viewpoint is a response to Yeoman's (2022) editorial on Sunderland AFC and the future of tourism. This viewpoint aims to outline the lessons one can learn from Star Wars about the future of tourism.

The paper reviews the live-action movies and series of the Star Wars franchise.

The paper derives specific conclusions in the following directions: the future technology in travel, tourism and hospitality; the tourists' motivation and behaviour; the management of travel, tourism and hospitality companies; destination management; economy and society and lessons from the franchise.

This is one of the first papers to elaborate on the lessons one can learn about the future of tourism from the Star Wars live-action movies and series.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate inhabitants of Finland and their continuing efforts to narrate a national identity within the constraints imposed by discursive meanings of Finnish culture through the experience of sauna.

Data collection comprised semi-structured interviews with Finnish local residents and entrepreneurs; these were supplemented with secondary data including books, articles, advertisements and documents referencing sauna in the context of Finland.

The analysis and interpretation by the authors show that the symbolic resource of sauna constitutes the legitimation of Finnish nation branding discourses at three levels: regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive; we label these sauna governance, communal identity creation and mythmaking, respectively.

The research contribution reveals that nation branding discourses are also forms of legitimation work. Finnish nation branding discourses are interwoven with sauna as the symbolic resource of “Finnishness” and become conduits for the expression of discursive meanings. This demonstrates that institutional legitimacy is an intrinsic aspect of the ways place branding discourses can be used as a mode of governance (i.e. a policy instrument).

Understanding customers is critical for service researchers and practitioners. Today, customers are increasingly active online, and valuable information about their opinions, experiences and behaviors can be retrieved from a variety of online platforms. Online customer information creates new opportunities to design personalized and high-quality service. This paper aims to review how netnography as a method can help service researchers and practitioners to better use such data.

A systematic review and analysis were conducted on 321 netnography studies published in marketing journals between 1997 and 2017.

The systematic review reveals that netnography has been applied in a variety of ways across different marketing fields and topics. Based on the analysis of existing netnography literature, empirical, theoretical and methodological recommendations for future netnographic service research are presented.

This paper shows how netnography can offer service researchers unprecedented opportunities to access naturalistic online data about customers and, hence, why it is an important method for future service research.

Netnographic research can help service firms with, for example, service innovation, advertising and environmental scanning. This paper provides guidelines for service managers who want to use netnography as a market research tool.

Netnography has seen limited use in service research despite many promising applications in this field. This paper is the first to encourage and support service researchers in their use of the method and aims to stimulate interesting future netnographic service research.

This paper aims to develop a theoretical framework for the conceptualization of customer experiential knowledge (CEK) by logically combining its different dimensions into one coherent explanatory concept. Drawing on the integration of the literature on customer experience, customer knowledge management and customer insights acquisition, supported by adequate empirical evidence, the framework provides a systematic, comprehensive and accurate understanding of CEK which, could contribute to the identification of relevant customer experience insights useful for customer knowledge management.

The analysis follows an inductive/deductive interpretative approach and it is based on a netnography of specialty coffee bloggers’ narratives in relation to their sustainability practices.

The paper identifies the following six types of CEK: normative, subcultural, epicurean, transcendental, subcultural and symbolic. Accordingly, CEK is defined as the knowledge tacitly possessed by customers in relation to how they live their consumption experiences according to a body of heterogeneous socio-cultural contextual factors (ethos, norms and symbols) and subjective influences (emotions, ingenuity, instincts and senses) deeply embedded into the narrative of a consumption experience.

While CEK has been largely observed and acknowledged, it has not been yet adequately addressed by existing research. The provision of a conceptual definition of CEK which emphasizes its different dimensions will be of use to both academics and practitioners to better identify and categorize the different manifestations of CEK when undertaking empirical observations or managerial decisions.

Despite the availability of many metrics and tools for marketing performance measurement, the way in which firms use their marketing metrics remains underexplored. This study aims to address this gap by empirically establishing the differing effects of the diagnostic and interactive uses of marketing metrics on firms’ market-sensing capability, contingent on competitive intensity and focus on market-related metrics.

This study builds on survey data collected from 210 Irish-based firms, complemented by 21 in-depth interviews with business managers. Survey data are analysed using regression analysis.

This study finds that firms using marketing metrics interactively to communicate organizational focus are better able to sense their markets, especially under high competition. The authors observe a positive impact of the interactive use of metrics on market-sensing capability, but a U-shaped impact of their diagnostic use, the magnitudes of which further depend on competitive intensity and firms’ focus on market-related metrics.

This study provides a nuanced view of marketing performance measurement (MPM) practices within firms, particularly focussing on diagnostic versus interactive uses of marketing metrics. It also sheds further light on how two diverse uses of marketing metrics – diagnostic and interactive uses – influence a firm’s market-sensing capability. Moreover, the identification of boundary conditions also contributes to the discussion of contextuality in MPM, highlighting the importance of aligning a firm’s uses of marketing metrics with its business environment.

This study provides novel insights into how diverse uses of marketing metrics may benefit firms. The differing effects of diagnostic and interactive uses of marketing metrics on market sensing highlight a primary need for developing the latter and for using the former only with caution. It establishes that all firms would equally benefit from an interactive use of marketing metrics that is pivotal to improving their ability to anticipate, detect and sense market changes.

This study provides novel understanding of the role of marketing metric uses in firms’ market-sensing capability and contributes to the discussion of contextuality in marketing performance measurement. It highlights the importance of aligning a firm’s use of marketing metrics with its business environment.