Brand heritage as a temporal perception: conceptualisation, measure and consequences

ABSTRACT

This research looks at the concept of brand heritage as a branded representation of the past and its influence on cognitive and affective responses. Although numerous items of research mention brand heritage, the subject still lacks conceptual clarity. This paper aims to address this gap and to build a scale measuring its perception by consumers. The literature review leads to a conceptualisation of brand heritage as the perception of a brand’s temporal management. Then, one qualitative and three quantitative studies facilitate the emergence and validate a three-dimensional scale of perceived brand heritage. A model demonstrates how brand heritage enhances brand credibility and personal nostalgia. This paper contributes to the apprehension of change and continuity in brand management, with potential extensions to other disciplines.

KEYWORDS:

• Brand heritage
• timelessness
• credibility
• personal nostalgia
• measurement scale
• structural equation modelling

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Professor Barry Babin for his feedback on an earlier version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Measure of Sample Adequacy (should be above 0.6).

2. Average Extracted Variance (should be above 0.5).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Fabien Pecot

Fabien Pecot is a Lecturer in Marketing at the University of York. He joined York after completing his Ph.D. from Aix-Marseille Graduate School of Management IAE in 2016. His research interests focus on brands’ representations of the past. The first draft of this paper was originally developed as part of his doctoral dissertation.

Pierre Valette-Florence

Pierre Valette-Florence is Professor of Marketing and Quantitative Methods at Grenoble University (IAE Grenoble, Graduate School of Management, France). Professor Valette-Florence has published numerous articles within the field of Marketing, Advanced Research Methods, Consumer Behavior, Branding Management and more specifically Luxury Brand Management.

Virginie De Barnier

Virginie de Barnier is Professor of Marketing and Dean of Aix-Marseille Graduate School of Management IAE. She graduated in both Marketing and Psychology. Her research interests are in the area of consumer behavior, advertising and luxury brand management. She has published several articles in Recherche et Applications en Marketing and Journal of Business Research.