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The purpose of this paper is to introduce the inaugural edition of Arts Marketing: An International Journal and highlight its vision for arts marketing and establish its research agenda.

Relevant articles are discussed through the prism of current academic thinking and the latest policy developments affecting the arts.

It is found that arts marketing promotes significant academic debate, and practical insights are offered into the ways in which the arts (broadly understood) can grow in a commercial world.

Creative solutions are needed not only to offset, but to enable arts marketing itself to grow as a discipline: marketers need to embrace the arts equally as much as artists need to embrace the market.

The “creative insights” section will bring practitioner expertise into the field of the arts from a variety of different perspectives.

The arts, in their varying forms impact on all of society in some shape or form. This journal aims to help raise the profile of the arts, which will in turn, benefit society as a whole.

This introduction establishes a broad arts marketing research agenda for the future.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the characteristics and usefulness of opinion leaders and market mavens in relation to theatre guides as a way for theatres to develop new audiences.

Surveys and a small number of in‐depth interviews are conducted within a sample of 1,200 theatre patrons. A univariate analysis of variance analysis determines degrees of correspondence between levels of opinion leadership or mavenism and reported influential behaviour.

Opinion leaders are much more useful in the process of audience development than mavens given their propensity to engage in positive reinforcement behaviours particularly in their roles as theatre guides.

While the level of mavenism is related to provision of general market information, it is not related to diffusion of performance‐specific information. Also, the portrayal of opinion leaders as living in a “closed world” unlikely to be an effective cultural influence on non‐attendees, is not supported. A further limitation is that it could not gauge the effectiveness of the self‐reported influential behaviour of non‐attendees. Further research should measure the effectiveness of opinion leaders based on how many of the non‐attendees they influenced came to the theatre.

Theatres should identify opinion leaders and encourage their natural “guide” behaviour with targeted incentives and information as a method of building new audiences and developing new relationships.

This paper will help theatres to use their resources more effectively to increase audience attendance. Further, the identification and establishment of theatre guides based on the characteristics of opinion leaders is within the capability of all arts organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to draw together the previous academic and industry research on non‐attendance of cultural attractions, followed by qualitative in‐depth interviews to identify commonalities or gaps in the previous research on barriers, constraints and inhibitors, as well as to propose linkages between these.

A multi‐method approach is used – where barriers, constraints and inhibitors are identified by means of thematic content analysis of the literature. A set of probing questions is developed based on these themes and is then examined in in‐depth interviews with individuals that had not visited cultural attractions in the past two years, in an attempt to triangulate data, as well as to identify connections between barriers.

From the literature, eight interconnected barriers to visitation are identified: physical access; personal access; cost; time and timing; product; personal interest and peer group; socialisation and understanding; and information. The in‐depth interviews generally support these, although it is also identified that there are complex interrelationships between the issues.

This paper addresses the neglected question of why people do not attend cultural attractions by triangulating thematic findings from the content analysis of diverse literature with in‐depth interview responses from one non‐visitor segment. This results in an interconnected model of barriers that can be used to assist managers to develop strategies addressing low visitation rates within targeted segments.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the implications of a greater marketing orientation among arts organisations and its impact on funding through sponsorship.

Utilising a qualitative methodology, the study employs case studies for the purpose of formulating tentative and emergent knowledge.

The case study observations reveal the adoption of a marketing orientation across the sample and most significantly for the purposes of securing and consolidating sponsorship relationships. But contrary to popular academic theory this is managed without significant threat to artistic integrity or adaptation of theatrical productions.

Data were derived from a purposive but limited sample. The advantages of a qualitative method in producing rich data is well established, however a longitudinal study would facilitate the understanding of the temporal shifts in arts sponsorships and counter the limits of the cross‐sectional nature of the study.

The study reveals a managerial capacity for arts organisations to attract sponsorship through customer orientation without the need to compromise its artistic and social goals.

A central concern to the increasing significance of business and private funding for the survival of arts organisations is the impact this has on the producers ability to remain faithful to the artistic integrity of their productions. This longstanding academic debate now has predominance in arts marketing management and the issues addressed in this paper serve to address this shift in emphasis.

The purpose of this paper is to consider whether art experiences can inform service‐dominant logic (SDL) discourse through an exploration of the co‐production and co‐creation processes of art experiences.

Empirical knowledge gained about art experiences is analysed to identify emergent themes about co‐production and co‐creation. Four modes of qualitative data collection are employed: research participant diaries, photo elicitation, in depth interviews and focus groups.

Key findings are there are three stakeholders involved in the co‐creation of art experiences, which all have critical and different roles; co‐creation and co‐production are both temporally based and evolving and there are points where they interact and intersect; and high levels of engagement in co‐production enhance individuals' contribution to the co‐creation of positive value and make their participation in future co‐production opportunities more likely.

The paper is exploratory and not a general population study. The methodology and sample of participants employed do not allow for the generalisation of the findings to the broader population.

Organisations may benefit from devising strategies to encourage greater dialogue and connection between all stakeholders involved in co‐production and co‐creation. The higher the level of individuals' co‐production of art experiences the greater likelihood of positive value being co‐created. Furthermore, the greater the possibility of individuals engaging in other co‐production experiences in the future. While individuals are attracted to co‐production possibilities, there are factors that are external to an experience that can act as either barriers to or facilitators of co‐production, and that consequently impact on co‐creation.

There is little extant research that explores the applicability of art experiences to SDL. This paper is significant in that it employs empirical research methods to develop knowledge on the topic. Furthermore, this paper is innovative in that it seeks to see whether the art experiences can inform generic marketing models, rather than whether generic marketing models can inform arts marketing.

Harry Potter is one of the world's most remarkable marketing phenomena. The purpose of this paper is to reveal that consumers interact with the Potter brand in a variety of ways, ways that parallel the four archetypal houses at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

The paper interrogates Pottermania by means of a longitudinal qualitative study of fans, non‐fans and neutrals.

The paper finds that, just as pupils at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and wizardly are many and varied, so too Rowling's readers come in several distinctive forms. In keeping with the prototypical characteristics of the Hogwarts houses, four Rowling reading archetypes can be tentatively identified: Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs, Ravenclaws, and Slytherins.

This paper shows, contrary to the stereotype, that there is much more to Harry Potter consumers than the long lines of enthusiastic fans standing outside bookstores at midnight.

In a world where brands are narratives and consumers are readers, this paper shows that there are several distinctive modes of “reading a brand” and evaluates their implications for the future of the Harry Potter franchise.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the influences of sociodemographic (SD), environmental, and marketing mix variables on household art expenditure.

Using the latest US census data collect from 140 metropolitan statistical areas, three stepwise multiple regressions are employed to identify the key determinants of household art expenditure and their directional impacts.

The paper evinces that a set of SD, environmental, and marketing mix variables explains a large percentage of variation of household art expenditure. In addition to that, these variables influence household art expenditure differently.

Limited by data availability, this paper focuses on investigating the effects of variables with available measures. Future researchers are encouraged to include a broader range of variables in analysis whenever possible.

This paper suggests that art dealers use the approach adopted in this research to predict household art expenditure. Market entry decisions should be based on an assessment of market expansion potential and a full comprehension of the limitations imposed by an area's SD, environmental, and marketing mix characteristics.

This is the first study to empirically explain the variation of household art expenditure.