Context
The retro trend has put products and brands from the past back into the limelight. Some managers try to surf this wave by emphasizing their brand’s heritage. Although all brands have a history, heritage brand managers carefully select information from the brand’s past to generate a marketing advantage. Moreover, as shown by this article, successful heritage marketing is not only about reminding consumers about the brand’s bygone days, it is also about proving that these past elements are still relevant in today’s world and remain in line with consumer concerns. In other words, managers should choose elements from the brand’s heritage that current consumers may still relate to. The struggle faced by luxury brands trying to seduce younger consumers in China provides a tangible example that consumers may not necessarily grasp the manager’s intentions when prominently displaying elements of the brand’s heritage in a marketing strategy. In an article published in Psychology & Marketing in 2021, Pfannes, Meyer, Orth and Rose investigate the discrepancies between managerial intentions and consumer reactions regarding the use of brand heritage.
Research questions
This article aims at bridging the two main streams of research concerning brand heritage: corporate heritage, which is a tool for positioning, and consumer responses to brand heritage. On the one hand, managers have access to the brand’s history and choose which elements of this history should be featured prominently in the marketing strategy. Usually, heritage elements are featured in the form of a narrative: managers chronologically tell the story of the brand, which contains elements related to when, who, how, why and where. On the other hand, consumers may either understand the manager’s intent or interpret the elements in another manner. Therefore, the “brand story” is told by managers through heritage elements but may not be understood by consumers according to the managers’ intent. In short, the authors, ask the following research question: how does the story told by managers, the “narrative”, impact consumer reactions?
Method
To answer this research question, Pfannes, Meyer, Orth and Rose use a mixed-methods approach:
– Study 1 consists of interviews with brand managers to identify specific elements of brand narratives in 6 product categories,
– Study 2 analyzed 55 websites of brands with a high or low heritage. 2 expert judges who were unaware of the purpose of the study were asked to assess how many narrative elements of brand heritage were featured on each website,
– Study 3 complements study 2 by evaluating consumer perceptions of brand heritage using 44 websites from study 2. After browsing a website, 360 consumers were asked to identify brand narrative elements and about their perceptions of brand heritage and overall attitude towards the brand.
– Study 4 was an experiment conducted on 565 MTurk participants with a fictitious wine brand to isolate the impact of various narrative elements connected with brand heritage on consumer responses.
Results
– Managers often use the following elements as parts of their brand heritage narrative:
Founding date = when
People (ex: founder, family or people who had a meaningful impact during the brand’s life) = who
Technology (ex: tools or methods that highlight a certain quality or craftsmanship) = how
Omni-temporality = past-present and past-future links
Struggle (ex: conflicts arising in the brand’s history) = precipitating action
Place of foundation = where
– While marketers use a wide range of narrative elements connected with brand heritage, consumers do not necessarily associate these elements with brand heritage. For instance, consumers seem to strongly agree that foundation date, omni-temporality and struggle signal the heritage of a brand. They moderately agree that technology and place may signal brand heritage. However, the impact of people was not supported. In other words, consumers identify foundation date, omni-temporality and struggles as key elements of brand heritage stories.
Why is this article relevant for researchers?
Previous research explains how consumers react to brand heritage (positive attitudes, stronger attachment, greater satisfaction etc), but does not explain what operational elements could trigger these reactions. By articulating the notions of history, heritage and narratives, this article is a first step towards explaining how the specific elements of brand heritage impact consumers. Future research should confirm the present findings in other product categories through experimentation. In particular, the results regarding the “people” dimension of the narrative are ambiguous and should be confirmed or explained by other studies. Future articles may also investigate the impact of other elements of brand heritage on consumers, using another framework than narratives such as the 4Ps for instance.
Moreover, this research is particularly interesting in the sense that it is integrative and bridges the gap between corporate heritage and consumer perceptions of brand heritage, by analyzing managerial intentions against consumer reactions. In this article, the authors have detailed the manager’s intent in the form of various specific elements of heritage. However, consumer responses could also be specified. Indeed, heritage perceptions are multidimensional: for instance, the founding date may be perceived as part of the brand’s heritage by consumers because it demonstrates the brand’s longevity, while omni-temporality could give consumers a sense of adaptability. In other words, all elements used by managers may not trigger the same heritage perception. Future research may look into that.
Finally, studying these elements across product categories may also help understand if certain heritage elements are inescapably expected by consumers in some sectors, and whether they can constitute points of integration of differentiation from a consumer’s perspective.
Why is this article relevant for professionals?
This article is crucial for professionals who wish to highlight their brand’s heritage. First, the present findings remind managers that their intentions may not always be properly understood by consumers. More importantly, this article unveils which elements of brand narratives are reliable and relevant to create points of integration or differentiation from a consumer’s perspective. For instance, French watchmaker Lip has worked very hard at concealing the struggles that ultimately led to the company’s downfall in the 1980s. Notably, there is no mention the famous resumption of the firm by the employees on Lip’s website. However, this article shows that struggles are a key element of a brand’s history, which calls Lip’s current strategy into question: maybe managers feel that this part of Lip’s history is better forgotten, but consumers might be more responsive than expected.