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An executive summary for managers and executive readers can be found at the end of this issue.
1. Introduction
The purpose of our study is to understand the identity of the Nobel Prize (Nobelpriset) as a corporate heritage brand and its management challenges. This is the first field-based study of the branding and identity of the Nobel Prize. The broader aim is to contribute to the theory and practice of the strategic management of corporate brands with a heritage. Thus, we have introduced the "Heritage Brand Identity Process". This is intended to serve as a structured approach for managing such brands.
Understanding a corporate brand's identity and heritage is relevant and concerns many organisations and institutions. We believe that all established brands have a history, which may vary in richness and length. Some brands have recognised the relevance of their history and have incorporated it as part of their identity even if only by the phrase "founded in [year]" as a component of its advertisements and website. Among these, some have found their history to be a salient part of their identity and use it as a component of their defined brand heritage. For those, heritage helps answer defining questions related to identity such as: "Who are we? Where do we come from? What do we stand for? What do we ultimately promise our stakeholders?"
Many brands have a heritage, but only a few can be categorised as heritage brands. Brand heritage is a perspective on the past, present and future. It is an overarching concept that applies to all brand types and organisations; it is a distillation of an organisation's heritage. Brand heritage is defined by Urde et al. (2007, p. 4) as "a dimension of a brand's identity found in its track record, longevity, core values, use of symbols and particularly in an organisational belief that its history is important" (Figure 1). Our definition of a corporate heritage brand is based on Urde et al. (2007, p. 4) original and general definition: "A [corporate] heritage brand is one with a positioning and value proposition based on its heritage". For clarity, here, we added "corporate" as a prefix to "heritage brand". If our study concerned a product or service brand (which it does...