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Dissertation
Let me tell you a story: brand heritage, narrative processing, and customer brand meaning-making
Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A.), Drexel University
Jul 2025
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/00011225
Abstract
Brand heritage is defined as those contemporarily useful attributes and qualities of a brand that convey its longevity, stability, and adaptability over time, thus connecting the brand's past, present, and future. Importantly, just because a brand has a high degree of brand heritage does not mean that its managers will choose to activate that heritage. Instead, to sustain a brand's marketplace viability, they must reconcile the potentially competing forces of mobilizing the past associations and value that have been attached to a brand over time versus evolving a brand to keep it vibrant and relevant to current and future customers. However, whatever decisions these managers may make, brand heritage still exerts influence on a brand's customers because the brand's existence over a period of time imbues it with qualities derived from the passage of time itself. Previous research into brand heritage has defined the construct, identified a number of its drivers, and established a relationship between brand heritage and a variety of customer attitudes and behaviors. This study sought to extend this understanding by investigating the customer brand meaning-making process by which brand heritage influences customer feelings, thoughts, and intended actions regarding a brand. Because of its past-present-future nature, it was asserted that brand heritage conforms to the structure of narrative. In narrative structure, a story-like sequence of events is temporally and causally linked so that earlier occurring events are inferred to cause later occurring events within the sequence. Accordingly, it was posited that brand heritage would have a positive relationship with the customer meaning-making process of narrative processing about a brand. Through a quantitative, cross-sectional, single-wave, survey-based research study, this relationship was found to be supported. Brand heritage was also found to be positively related to brand authenticity (feelings), brand credibility (thoughts), and conative brand image (intended actions) regarding a brand. These results further the academic investigation of brand heritage and can help managers make more informed decisions concerning brand heritage in their marketing efforts. Future opportunities for scholarly investigation and additional takeaways for managers are also discussed.
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Details
- Title
- Let me tell you a story
- Creators
- Colleen Elizabeth-Ann Chorak
- Contributors
- Trina Larsen Andras (Advisor)Mark Stehr (Advisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Drexel University
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A.)
- Publisher
- Drexel University
- Number of pages
- xiv, 341 pages
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Bennett S. LeBow College of Business; Drexel University
- Other Identifier
- 991022138779504721