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The purpose of this paper is to explore the implications of the selfie for marketing management in the era of celebrity. The purpose is to show that the facilitation of the creative performance of consumer identity is a key element of the marketing management task for the media convergence era.

The paper uses the selfie, the picture of oneself taken by oneself, as a metaphor to develop a conceptual exploration of the nature of marketing in the light of the dominance of celebrity and entertainment in contemporary media and entertainment.

The paper suggests that marketing management in the era of convergence should facilitate consumers’ identity projects through participatory and engaging social media initiatives. Marketers must furnish and facilitate not only the props for consumers mediated identity performances, but also the scripts, sets and scenes, plot devices, cinematographic and other visual techniques, costumes, looks, movements, characterizations and narratives.

This is a conceptual paper that sketches out the beginning of a re-framed, communication-focussed vision of marketing management in the era of media convergence.

Marketing managers can benefit from thinking about consumer marketing as the stage management of consumer visual, physical, virtual, sensory and psychic environments that enable consumers to actively participate in celebrity culture.

This paper suggests ways in which marketing practice can emerge from its pre-digital frame to embrace the new digital cultures of consumption.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of Asian consumer culture by exploring how hungry ghost death ritual in the Buddhist world reconciles spiritual asceticism and materialism.

This is an interpretive study that incorporates elements of visual semiotics, ethnography and qualitative data analysis. The native-speaking first author interviewed local ritual leaders of the Pee Ta Khon festival in Dansai, Thailand, while both authors witnessed examples of other Buddhist death rituals in Thailand and visited temples and markets selling death ritual paraphernalia. Data include translated semi-structured interview transcripts, field notes, photographs and videos, the personal introspection of the first author and also news articles and website information.

The paper reveals how hungry ghost death ritual resolves cultural contradictions by connecting materialism and spirituality through consumption practices of carnival celebration with feasting, music, drinking, costumes and spirit offerings of symbols of material wealth, such as paper money and branded goods.

Further research in the form of full ethnographic studies of the same and other rituals would add additional detail and depth to the understanding of the ritual in Asian consumer culture.

The paper extends existing qualitative consumer research into death ritual into a new area and sheds light on the way managers must locate Asian marketing initiatives within distinctively local contexts.

In this editorial viewpoint for the special issue, the authors identify a need to deepen our understanding of the important role that Asian consumer culture plays in the global marketplace of the twenty-first century.

This editorial article discusses the emergence of Asian consumer culture, offers an integrative summary of the special issue and develops several key directions for future research.

The authors observe that Asian consumer culture is not a coherent knowledge tradition that can be described merely as “collectivist” or “Confucianist” in nature. Rather, it is better understood as the confluence of cultural traditions that are characterized by inner differentiation and complexity, various transformations and mutual influences in the Asian region and beyond.

Although Asia’s economic growth has received much recent attention, extant theory regarding Asian consumer culture is still in its infancy. The authors highlight important developments in this area that show the path for future work.

The authors make three contributions to the emerging scholarly interest in Asian consumer culture. First, the authors respond to recent calls to increase the use of qualitative methods in Asian contexts. Second, the authors draw attention to the cultural complexities and mutual influences that characterize contemporary Asian consumer cultures, and subcultures in the Asian region and beyond, through the selection of articles for this special issue. Finally, the authors draw the threads together to provide directions for future research in this area.

There has been considerable research into the global phenomenon of luxury brand consumption, but relatively few studies have empirically explored key relationships influencing purchase intention. This research aims to consider the respective roles of social context, individual perception, and vanity, and to set these relationships within a broader theoretical context of the literature on possession and consumer identity.

The empirical study consisted of a large‐scale survey conducted among Chinese luxury brand consumers in Taiwan. The data were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression.

The findings support the influence of the social context on purchase intention for luxury brands. There was weaker support for the role of perception. The experiential and functional aspects of luxury brand purchase were positively correlated with purchase intention, but symbolic value was not. Physical and achievement vanity had a positive impact on purchase intention while only achievement vanity had a moderating effect on perception.

This study offers new empirical support for the proposition that vanity has a role in luxury brand purchase intention and thereby shades both theoretical and managerial understanding of luxury brand consumption. It also suggests that symbolic value, which is highly influential in western conceptualizations of luxury brand meaning, needs to be re‐evaluated in the context of Chinese consumers.

This study offers new empirical findings which contribute to a re‐conceptualization of the antecedents of purchase intention in the area of luxury brand consumption. In particular, the study provides evidence of the roles of social context, perception and vanity in a Chinese consumption context to inform the primarily western models of luxury brand purchase intention.