Can cultural symbols of goods influence marketing? Evidence from China’s Duan ink stone industry

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper presents an empirical analysis of the impact of cultural symbols on marketing by using survey data from the China’s Duan ink stone industry. The empirical regression results show that cultural symbols have a significant positive impact on marketing. In heterogeneity analysis, group characteristics of producers, such as education level and years of experience, can also influence the relationship between cultural symbols and marketing. We also utilize the conditional mixed process (CMP) method and instrumental variables (IV) to address the endogeneity of the model. The contribution of our study is that we provide a new research perspective to study the role of cultural symbols in marketing from the production side and provide new data and industry samples for future research.