Brand-Mediated Intangible Cultural Heritage: Authenticity, Appropriation, and Consumer Legitimation in Starbucks China’s Heritage-Themed Retail Spaces

Intangible cultural heritage (ICH) increasingly circulates through commercial and branded environments alongside museums, festivals, and community-based settings. This article examines Starbucks China’s heritage-themed retail spaces as a case of brand-mediated ICH, focusing on how consumers evaluate such representation. Drawing on critical heritage studies, brandscape theory, authenticity scholarship, heritage affect, and cultural appropriation research, the study tests a conditional affective legitimation model. In a stimulus-based online survey, 289 Chinese consumers living outside Guangdong Province viewed an approximately 40-s video and a written description of Starbucks China’s Guangzhou Yongqingfang ICH concept store. The original questionnaire assessed perceived cultural authenticity, cultural pride, brand attitude, and perceived cultural appropriation. These measures are interpreted, with explicit qualifications, in relation to perceived heritage authenticity, affective heritage resonance, consumer-level evaluation, and appropriation concern. Higher perceived authenticity was associated with stronger pride-related responses and more favorable brand evaluation. The estimated indirect association through pride was weaker at higher appropriation concern, although it remained positive. The study thus illustrates how favorable responses to commercially mediated heritage can coexist with ethical concern. Its empirical claims concern evaluations of a standardized representation, not sales performance, actual store experience, or legitimacy granted by heritage communities.