ارزش احساسی ابتکارات مبتنی بر هنر: تقویت روابط نام تجاری و مصرف کننده لوکس The emotional value of arts-based initiatives: Strengthening the luxury brand–consumer relationship

1. Introduction Contemporary business reality, especially in the luxury brand sector, indicates that an increasing number of luxury brands are actively involved with the arts, in what has been described as an attempt to establish themselves as ‘modern-day Medicis by becoming patrons’ of the arts (King, 2016). Chanel, Tod’s, Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Gucci, and Rolex are only some of the luxury brands which are heavily investing in activities relevant to the arts; indicatively, luxury brands’ investment in environmental and artistic efforts was estimated at €750 million for 2014 (D’Arpizio, Levato, Zito, & de Montgolfier, 2014). In this context, luxury brands are increasingly involved in a variety of cultural events on the axes of fine arts, letters or savoir-vivre; such orchestrated attempts go beyond the mere role of sponsor, when recognizing the transformational power of the arts (Berthoin & Strauß, 2013). Interestingly, despite the fact that academic literature has started to pick up on the trending ‘fusion’ of luxury brands and art, it seems that the few recent publications either discuss the whole phenomenon theoretically (cf. Dion & Arnould, 2011) and/or focus on managerially intended outcomes (cf. Chailan & Valek, 2014; Panigyrakis & Koronaki, 2014). Moreover, a host of different terms have been employed in recent publications to describe the relationship between luxury brands and the arts: indicatively, Kapferer (2014) discusses the wider phenomenon of luxury brand ‘artification’, Baumgarth, Lohrisch, and Kastner (2014) and Kastner (2013) refer to ‘Arts – Luxury Brands Collaborations’, whereas Joy, Sherry, Venkatesh, Wang, and Chan (2012) coin the term ‘M(Art) Worlds’ to refer to the artful design of the store environment and label ‘art patronage’ the sponsoring of museum exhibits and the commissioning of art installations. Beyond this lack of consensus in conceptualizing the phenomenon, the question of how luxury consumers actually respond to luxury brands’ initiatives pertaining to the arts has yet been left unaddressed, notwithstanding its implications for assessing the ultimate effectiveness of such activities. The present paper thus theoretically examines this issue and reports the design and findings of a study providing insight into connoisseurs’ responses to the aforediscussed activities, drawing on a recent theoretical account on the private benefits that ‘Arts-Based Initiatives’ produce in the individual from the management literature (Schiuma, 2009, 2011). The paper is structured as follows: first, a review of academic literature on arts and luxury branding is provided and the theoretical background regarding Arts-Based Initiatives from the luxury consumer’s standpoint is presented. Subsequently, a series of corresponding hypotheses deriving from the latter are formulated. Then, the methodology of the empirical study is described and the findings are discussed. The article concludes with managerial and theoretical implications, limitations and directions for further research.