New marketing theories and practices emerging from innovations in the cultural and tourism sectors

Cultural and tourism organisations have always been characterised by their capacity for innovation (Caves, 2000; Pratt & Jeffcutt, 2009; Wijngaarden et al., 2019). These innovations can be associated with both the design and creation of new cultural and tourism products or with radically innovative production processes that break with existing conventions (Castañer & Campos, 2002; Pierce, 2000; Trevisan, 2016). Beyond ‘product’ innovations, forms of strategic and marketing innovation include the introduction of a novelty into an organisation leading to a particular organisational change (Le Roy et al., 2013) through experience design, distribution channels, place branding (Chaney, 2020; Lichrou et al., 2017) or labelling such as Unesco (Barbosa, 2016; Dosquet et al., 2020; Mariani & Guizzardi, 2020; Thuriot, 2019), or communication strategies and pricing mechanisms like paid streaming for theatres and operas (Mueser & Vlachos, 2018; Roll et al., 2017). The broad scope of research about innovations in increasingly intertwined cultural and tourism experiences (Bourgeon-Renault & Petr, 2022) and their implications for marketing theory and practice (Purchase & Volery, 2020) calls for more significant research on such sectors.

The impact of new technologies on making offers more attractive has been demonstrated in practice (particularly through audiences’ reception of these offers), supporting the need for marketing to increase understanding of the various ways in which innovative technologies can generate positive effects on the evaluation and promotion of offers. Further, recent and previous research have highlighted the role of co-creation, social interactions and emotions, narratives, and gamification during the experience (Bourgeon-Renault et al., 2019; Frochot et al., 2017; Garcia et al., 2019; Jafari et al., 2013; Minkiewicz et al., 2014; Xi & Hamari, 2020; Xu et al., 2017). However, we should not only focus on these themes since new technologies infuse the entirety of the stages from production to consumption of a cultural and tourist experience, leading to profound changes in the value chain (Benghozi, 2016; Benghozi & Salvador, 2016). Therefore, there are still numerous and important research gaps to fulfill.

This special issue sheds light on the diversity of the impacts of technology and innovation in the cultural and tourism sectors. In doing so, this special issue belongs to the Journal of Marketing Management’s long tradition of stimulating research in the field and to provide conceptual and empirical content for further managerial conclusions and recommendations (Butler, 2000; Derbaix & Gombault, 2016; Dresler & Fuchs, 2021; Hanna & Rowley, 2019; Hunter-Jones, 2014; Lecompte et al., 2017; Lehman & Wickham, 2014; Murdy et al., 2016; Preece & Kerrigan, 2015; Skandalis et al., 2016; Tinson et al., 2015; Vom Lehn, 2010; etc.).

A preliminary commentary shows how the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the operations of many cultural industries. It also paved the way for an overall technological acceleration, both from companies and from consumers. Illustrating the current variety of challenges facing the culture and tourism sectors, the other five articles published in this special issue demonstrate that the new theories and practices emerging in these sectors concern transformations in the processes of co-creation and production (article 1), as well as in the channels of dissemination through the development of streaming in the opera sector (article 2) or in the intermediation of the digitised markets of independent music (article 3). The mutations and transitions which the culture and tourism sector is experiencing also suggest the use of augmented reality techniques by heritage professionals to facilitate the co-creation of experience (article 4). Finally, a sociological narrative approach (article 5) is proposed to tell the story of cultural and tourist experiences within communities in which consumers engage in their practices with a shared social and historical context.

The preliminary commentary titled ‘Innovations in COVID times: Which lessons to learn for the cultural industry?’ authored by Alain Decrop and Nathalie Dumont, highlights that the culture sector was greatly affected by the crisis through the closing of theatres and of borders and had no other solution than adaptation and innovation in order to survive. This paper discusses a number of such innovations, both in terms of technology and of business models for the cultural industry. Consumers’ evaluation of such innovations is assessed through a quantitative survey involving streaming experiences with theatre programs and broadcasted concerts.

The first paper titled ‘Innovating with stakeholders to co-create value in cultural tourism experiences: A case study of Schokland in the Netherlands’, authored by Christina Mijnheer and Jordan Gamble, explores how the management of heritage visitor attractions (HVAs) innovate with local stakeholders in the co-creation of visitor value in cultural tourism experiences. Based on a study of the UNESCO World Heritage site Schokland in the Netherlands, 13 interviews were conducted with management and local stakeholders over a five-year period. The results advance heritage management discourse by critically assessing HVAs regarding relationship management and innovations with stakeholders driving development processes. This paper contributes to service-dominant logic theory and value co-creation theory by applying the concept of co-creation to the collaborative innovations between management and local stakeholders.

The second paper titled ‘Opera Streaming: Perceived value as an explanatory factor for loyalty and intention to attend an opera in an opera house’, authored by Yacine Ouazzani, Haydeé Calderón-García and Berta Tubillejas-Andrés, highlights the effects of the development of online streaming in the opera sector. The authors argue that this delivery technique can help opera houses reach a wider audience and build loyalty among fans of the genre. More specifically, the links between the sources of value of the opera streaming consumption experience, loyalty, and intentions to attend an opera in an opera house are analysed. The results show that hedonic, epistemic, and functional values have a significant impact on loyalty but through different behavioural intentions. Also, epistemic value is the only value that influences viewers’ intention to go to an opera house.

The third paper titled ‘Exploring the (un)changing nature of cultural intermediaries in digitalised markets: Insights from independent music’, authored by Boris Collet and Eric Rémy, examines the evolution of the music industry in the digital age by focusing on market intermediation. More particularly, it aims to understand how digital technologies have transformed cultural intermediaries in the context of the independent music market relying on Karpik’s (2010) economics of singularities. A more than human (n)ethnography approach, in-depth interviews, and secondary data analysis, are used to uncover new insights into the persistent function of judgement devices in digitised markets. Thus, this study highlights the material and axiological possibilities of judgemental devices, and reveals how players in the independent music market experience the persistence of power relations in the music industry and the paradoxes of digitisation.

The fourth paper titled ‘Augmented reality and experience co-creation in heritage settings’, authored by Tanvi Panhale, Derek Bryce and Eleni Tsougkou, focuses on augmented reality (AR) and its adoption by heritage sites to create and deliver heritage visitor experiences. Here, the heritage supplier’s perspective is explored and focuses on how AR applications are designed, while previous studies have mainly focused on AR from the consumer’s perspective. Based on interviews with heritage experts, the results shed light on the virtual and physical experience elements included in AR design. Four techniques employed by heritage producers facilitating the co-creation of experiences through AR are discovered: storytelling, social interaction, participation and personalisation.

The fifth paper titled ‘Struggle of the story: Towards a sociocultural model of story world tension in communal consumption’, authored by Frank Lindberg and Lena Mossberg, aims to show how consumers are captured by collective story worlds in communal consumption in the context of climbing tourism in Norway and Sweden. To this end, it proposes a narrative sociology approach to the institutional shaping of communities. Findings of the empirical study show that climbing community consumers experience two distinct narrative worlds with different ethos, conventions and content rules. In this way, the authors extend existing knowledge in the field of marketing with a multifaceted understanding of how collective narratives function.

Although the research presented in this special issue deepens our conceptual and empirical position on the impact of innovations in the culture and tourism sectors, other research opportunities are emerging through the transformations and transitions that the cultural and tourism field is currently undergoing. These are all questions for the actors of the cultural and tourism sector which concern:

• The audiences of these activities: between diversification of the audiences and change of relationship with these audiences for more participation and inclusion;

• The digitalisation of culture and tourism: between the predominant role of platforms and, more broadly, the appearance of new digital forms of works of art or tourism, or mediations to be thought of as cross-channel.

• The consideration of territories: between relocation (tourism and local culture), changes in the mode of valorisation or governance.

• Management methods by better integrating durable development, corporate social responsibility, but also the stakeholders concerned, natural and human capital, and more generally the commons.

Finally, answers must still be found to the ecological, social and economic crises and transitions that imply changes in our modes of consumption and production, in the culture and tourism sectors as in so many other sectors.