Memory, heritage and products
A sharp and objective book summarises the bonds between corporate history and marketing
Memory and history as marketing tools to promote one’s image and products. Heritage, that is, understood as product attribute and comprising symbolic content, such as bonds with the past, founding figures, their families, the first production techniques, the people who made the product or brand famous, the historical context, the native regions. Heritage embodies a complex concept, which needs to be well understood and deployed with care. A concept that is also part of good corporate culture when, indeed, it’s properly framed within the potential it can bring and its limitations.
Heritage di prodotto e di marca (Product and brand heritage), written by Fabrizio Mosca (who’s been teaching economics and corporate management, as well as marketing and corporate strategies, at the University of Turin and its Business Administration School for a long time) makes for an excellent contribution to these themes.
The book looks at heritage from a particular angle: the marketing perspective of companies that operates in luxury markets worldwide. An interesting viewpoint that could also be useful to other sectors in more specific markets.
Mosca starts from the premises that, in marketing terms, companies have to adopt strategies that recall and enhance their heritage in order to compete in markets dedicated to goods with a high symbolic value; indeed, in this segment, having a product and a brand with unique and distinctive features – such as an ancient history linked to a legendary and unforgettable founding figure, a family or an emblematic place of birth – represents a source of competitive advantage, permanent and difficult to imitate. Heritage, then, as a genuine working tool related to the technical qualities of the product that embodies it. According to the author, the significance of these immaterial attributes also marks the deep diversity that exists between luxury and fashion markets and those more permanent markets related to consumption goods, where the concept of heritage has less value.
In a little less than 200 pages, Mosca explores all this, also including relevant theories and practices about heritage. After an analysis and interpretation of relevant literature and reference models related to heritage, the author goes on to contextualise product and service concepts – understood as the totality of tangible, intangible and symbolic attributes – and creates a specific reference model aimed at enhancing heritage in luxury goods based on the content analysis of 150 brands. He subsequently identifies the operational and strategic marketing actions that companies implement in order to manage and recall, in modern key, their own heritage.
Theory accompanied by a good amount of practical considerations – a combination that makes this book a very useful one, as on the one hand it comprises a significant amount of good corporate culture and, on the other hand, it provides practical tools to companies who might want to better understand this topic and then embark on their own heritage path. The table (displayed over several pages) at the end of the book is very good and, above all, very interesting, as it summarises the various elements that compose the heritage strategies of several companies belonging to the luxury sector.
Heritage di prodotto e di marca (Product and brand heritage)
Fabrizio Mosca
Franco Angeli, 2022
A sharp and objective book summarises the bonds between corporate history and marketing
Memory and history as marketing tools to promote one’s image and products. Heritage, that is, understood as product attribute and comprising symbolic content, such as bonds with the past, founding figures, their families, the first production techniques, the people who made the product or brand famous, the historical context, the native regions. Heritage embodies a complex concept, which needs to be well understood and deployed with care. A concept that is also part of good corporate culture when, indeed, it’s properly framed within the potential it can bring and its limitations.
Heritage di prodotto e di marca (Product and brand heritage), written by Fabrizio Mosca (who’s been teaching economics and corporate management, as well as marketing and corporate strategies, at the University of Turin and its Business Administration School for a long time) makes for an excellent contribution to these themes.
The book looks at heritage from a particular angle: the marketing perspective of companies that operates in luxury markets worldwide. An interesting viewpoint that could also be useful to other sectors in more specific markets.
Mosca starts from the premises that, in marketing terms, companies have to adopt strategies that recall and enhance their heritage in order to compete in markets dedicated to goods with a high symbolic value; indeed, in this segment, having a product and a brand with unique and distinctive features – such as an ancient history linked to a legendary and unforgettable founding figure, a family or an emblematic place of birth – represents a source of competitive advantage, permanent and difficult to imitate. Heritage, then, as a genuine working tool related to the technical qualities of the product that embodies it. According to the author, the significance of these immaterial attributes also marks the deep diversity that exists between luxury and fashion markets and those more permanent markets related to consumption goods, where the concept of heritage has less value.
In a little less than 200 pages, Mosca explores all this, also including relevant theories and practices about heritage. After an analysis and interpretation of relevant literature and reference models related to heritage, the author goes on to contextualise product and service concepts – understood as the totality of tangible, intangible and symbolic attributes – and creates a specific reference model aimed at enhancing heritage in luxury goods based on the content analysis of 150 brands. He subsequently identifies the operational and strategic marketing actions that companies implement in order to manage and recall, in modern key, their own heritage.
Theory accompanied by a good amount of practical considerations – a combination that makes this book a very useful one, as on the one hand it comprises a significant amount of good corporate culture and, on the other hand, it provides practical tools to companies who might want to better understand this topic and then embark on their own heritage path. The table (displayed over several pages) at the end of the book is very good and, above all, very interesting, as it summarises the various elements that compose the heritage strategies of several companies belonging to the luxury sector.
Heritage di prodotto e di marca (Product and brand heritage)
Fabrizio Mosca
Franco Angeli, 2022