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Edward Bellamy’s famous 1888 best‐seller Looking Backward imagined a paradisal world where social and economic problems of poverty, strife, class, and war were eliminated through a Utopian political economy based on socialist principles. What makes Bellamy’s thought compelling for marketing scholars is his emphasis on the consumer, his focus on equality as the vehicle for societal transformation, and his analysis of the role consumer desire, envy, and greed play in generating strife and strain. Thus, his Utopian vision seems to have much in common with the mantra of the modern marketing machine – happiness is material, and your credit card is your ticket to the good life. However, his vision of the good life is largely at odds with the market economy’s version. This paper examines the man behind a uniquely consumer oriented socialist paradise and suggests that his writings have left an inspiring legacy that marketing academics might find insightful.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the contributions presented in this special section on the selfie phenomenon and its significance for marketing practice and scholarship.

The significance of the topic is reviewed and themes related to the selfie phenomenon and marketplace issues are discussed in connection with extant research. The contributions of each paper are briefly highlighted and discussed.

Although the selfie is a relatively new phenomenon, both marketing practice and scholarship have noticed its prominence in consumer lives and potential for generating marketplace insights. Despite its frequently presumed triviality, the selfie is a multifaceted phenomenon of significance to key marketing areas such as branding, consumer behavior or market research. Possible avenues for future research are outlined.

Key issues relating to research into the selfie phenomenon for marketing scholars are illuminated.

The purpose of this paper is to review a typology of branding that identifies four perspectives on branding: corporate perspectives, consumer perspectives, cultural perspectives and critical perspectives. This typology helps organise and synthesise the growing interdisciplinary literature on brands and branding, and sheds light on the various ways corporate brands work.

A brief synthetic review of branding is offered, along with contemporary examples of emerging aspects of the four branding perspectives.

The four perspectives demonstrate the growing interdisciplinary interest in brands. They also signal a move away from a focus on the brand-consumer dyad, towards broader social cultural and theoretical concerns. Studies that extend brand research into cultural and historical realms may provide an essential bridge between our understandings, on the one hand, of value residing within the product or producer intention, and on the other, value created by individual consumers or brand communities.

The insights from this review may shed light on a number of branding research areas, including studies on corporate marketing, cultural heritage brands and strategic brand communication.

The paper illustrates how complex branding has become and offers conceptual tools to think about and guide branding from multiple points of view.

This paper provides a selective overview of important recent developments in corporate marketing and brand research over as well as a look at visual aspects of four perspectives of branding as a complement to corporate branding research. The typology of brand perspectives helps organise and illuminate a burgeoning brand literature, and provides an interdisciplinary framework for understanding brands.

This paper aims to provide a theoretical analysis of contemporary brand communication for technology products, focused on how the human body functions as a metaphorical and communicative device, to shed insight into how technological brands make their products understandable, tangible, and attractive in interesting ways.

An interdisciplinary conceptual review and analysis focuses on issues of metaphor and the body in marketing research and social theory. This analysis is discussed and applied to the communication of technological brands.

The paper argues that to successfully communicate technological brands requires interdisciplinary insights in order to understand consumption contexts. It proposes an analytic framework for practice and research focused on visual communication for technology brands and products, and demonstrates how advertising both creates and contributes to culture.

Researchers need to understand that a sole focus on the advertising system needs to be supplemented by an understanding of how the symbol of the body in technology advertisements is reflective and productive of meaning in socio‐cultural discourse.

Brand researchers need to add to the prevailing advertising as persuasion model to encompass representation and culture in brand communications. The paper contributes to understanding how basic visual forms, such as the human body, are employed in technology product marketing. It challenges marketers and researchers to broaden their conception of branding and marketing communications to one more consistent with an image economy.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze the influence that globalization has had on the development of the contemporary Japanese art production. The study also aims to expand the global narrative of Japanese art by introducing concepts behind festivals for revitalization that have been occurring in Japan in recent years.

Guided by Culture Theorist Nira Yuval-Davies’ approach to the politics of belonging, the paper is situated within cultural studies and considers the development of contemporary art in Japan in relation to the power structures present within the global art market. This analysis draws heavily from the research of art historians Reiko Tomii, Adrian Favell, and Gennifer Weisenfeld, and is complemented by investigative research into the life of Art Director Kitagawa Fram, as well as observational analyses formed by on-site study of the Setouchi Triennale in 2015 and 2016.

The paper provides historical insight to the ways that the politics of belonging to the western world has created a limited benchmark for critical discussion about contemporary Japanese art. It suggests that festivals for revitalization in Japan not only are a good source of diversification, but also evidences criticism therein.

Due to the brevity of this text, readers are encouraged to further investigate the source material for more in-depth understanding of the topics.

The paper implies that art historiography should take a multilateral approach to avoid a western hegemony in the field.

This paper fulfills a need to reflect on the limited global reception to Japanese art, while also identifying one movement that art historians and theorists may take into account in the future when considering a Japanese art discourse.

In recent years, scholars have begun suggesting that marketing can learn a lot from art and art history. This paper aims to build on that work by developing the proposition that successful artists are powerful brands.

Using archival data and biographies, this paper explores the branding acumen of Pablo Picasso.

Picasso maneuvered with consummate skill to assure his position in the art world. By mid-career, he had established his brand so successfully that he had the upper hand over the dealers who represented him, and his work was so sought-after that he could count on selling whatever proportion of it he chose to allow to leave his studio. In order to achieve this level of success, Picasso had to read the culture in which he operated and manage the efforts of a complex system of different intermediaries and stakeholders that was not unlike an organization. Based on an analysis of Picasso's career, the authors assert that in their management of these powerful brands, artists generate a complex, multifaceted public identity that is distinct from a product brand but shares important characteristics with corporate brands, luxury brands and cultural/iconic brands.

This research extends prior work by demonstrating that having an implicit understanding of the precepts of branding is not limited to contemporary artists and by connecting the artist to emerging conceptualizations of brands, particularly the nascent literatures on cultural, complex and corporate brands.

This paper aims to compute a measure for anti-money laundering/counter-financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) compliance and investigate its determinants.

Using the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations and assigning weights to them, the study computes a measure for AML compliance. Further, the determinants of AML compliance were investigated using ordinary least squares (OLS) data of 155 countries between 2004 and 2016.

The findings suggest that AML compliance have slightly improved over the years. Further, the OLS regression results show that technology, regulatory quality, bank concentration, trade openness and financial intelligence center significantly determined and improved AML compliance.

From the findings, it is evident that countries that wish to improve the AML compliance should focus more on technology, regulatory quality, structure of the banking sector, size of the economy and institution of financial intelligence center so as to enhance AML compliance.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper reveals a first AML/CFT compliance index that measures the cross-country level of AML/CFT compliance from the year 2004 to 2016. Subsequently, this paper adopted an OLS econometric model to identify the key determinants of AML/CFT compliance among member states of FATF.