Brand narratives: Content and consequences among heritage brands

Abstract

This study bridges the gap between the managerial view and the consumer view integrating research on storytelling with consumer perceptions of brand heritage. It identifies key elements of the stories told by managers of heritage product brands and consumer responses to these elements. Adopting a mixed-methods approach, four empirical studies (in-depth interviews with managers, content analysis of brand websites, a survey, and an experiment) provide evidence for relevant story elements, their use by heritage brand managers and their effects on consumers' responses.With several variables included as controls (consumer age, anxiety state, biological sex, brand familiarity, category involvement, category knowledge and verbal processing style), the findings indicate that brand managers' assumptions about the effectiveness of specific narrative elements do not entirely reflect consumer' responses to these elements. Managers (Studies 1 and 2) commonly employ the story elements of the date of foundation, people, technology, omni-temporality, struggle, and the place of foundation. While consumers (Studies 3 and 4) infer heritage from the brand's date of foundation, omni-temporality, and technology, the results are less unanimous for the story elements of people, struggle, and place of foundation.

Cultural congruity and extensions of corporate heritage brands: An empirical analysis of time‐honored brands in China

“…While corporate heritage brands have been mostly studied from brand management perspectives (e.g., Balmer, 2013; Hudson, 2011; Urde et al, 2007), our paper dedicates to the understanding of consumers' psychological underpinnings and cognitive outcomes. Consumer‐focused research on corporate heritage brands offers promising avenues for theory development in the subject domain (e.g., Mencarelli et al, 2020; Pecot et al, 2018; Pfannes et al, 2021).…”

The Advantage of Customer Relationship Management in Increasing a Company's Income and Reducing Expenditures

“…Additionally, mobile phones are having an effect on the manner in which we acquire items in the environments that we experience on a daily basis. Customers are now the ones who share information about an organization's image and brand, while companies no longer actively promote their own information about the company or the brand [11]. This shift in information dissemination has resulted in a shift in the power dynamic.…”

Visually communicating brand heritage on social media: champagne on Instagram

“…Some look more specifically at one particular visual cue, such as the year of establishment (Pizzi and Scarpi, 2019) or the mascot (Orth et al , 2019). Others manipulate visual cues in experimental material such as typography and illustrations (Rose et al , 2017) and very recently, researchers revealed that brand heritage is made available in stories through the following textual elements: date of foundation, people, technology, Omni-temporality, struggle and the place of foundation (Pfannes et al , 2021). Although these provide valuable insights, the translation of brand heritage into visual cues has never been the focus of any specific existing research.…”

“…Over the past 15 years, continued research has refined the concept of brand heritage and its application to the corporate and product level of analysis (Pecot and De Barnier, 2017; Balmer and Burghausen, 2015; Pfannes et al , 2021; Urde and Greyser, 2015) and also engaged with the consumer perception of this dimension of a brand’s identity (Balmer and Chen, 2016; Pecot and De Barnier, 2018). However, there remains a gap in the literature regarding the translation of brand heritage, taken as an abstract strategic resource, into an element of the visual brand identity (Phillips et al , 2014).…”

“…Existing research considers brand heritage as part of luxury brand visual communications (Mandler et al , 2020; Rokka and Canniford, 2016). Some selected elements such as the founding date (Baumert and de Obesso, 2021; Pizzi and Scarpi, 2019), the stories (Pfannes et al , 2021) or the mascot (Orth et al , 2019) have been looked at as part of the consumer perception of brand heritage, but a fundamental gap remains regarding the visual operationalization of brand heritage.…”