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Introduction
The luxury market environment that has been characterized by dynamism and growth (Phau and Prendergast, 2000; Băcilă et al., 2012), is in a state of transition changing the competitive dynamics and nature of research needed. Luxury is a core branding value traditionally made viable by reinforcing its exclusivity, selectivity and limited accessibility (Kapferer and Bastien, 2009; Chevalier and Gutsatz, 2012).
While luxury brands’ legitimacy has long been subject to considerable questioning (Brown et al., 2003; Dion and Arnould, 2011), heritage brands carry an association with credibility and authenticity (Burghausen and Balmer, 2015). This positive association is thought to be the result of the heritage brand’s image of authenticity (Alexander, 2009; Fionda and Moore, 2009), reliability (Leigh et al., 2006) and uniqueness (Fionda and Moore, 2009; Ardelet et al., 2015).
Within the literature on luxury, heritage brands recently received considerable attention (Riley et al., 2004; Fionda and Moore, 2009; Wuestefeld et al., 2012; DeFanti et al., 2014; Ardelet et al., 2015; Dion and Borraz, 2015; Dion and Mazzalovo, 2016). Although luxury and heritage concepts originally generate from separate streams of research they share a common conceptual perspective in terms of their focus on uniqueness (Fionda and Moore, 2009) and exclusivity (Alexander, 2009; Fionda and Moore, 2009). In particular, the consumption and use of certain brands enhances consumers’ perception of differentiation, exclusivity and status (Vigneron and Johnson, 1999, 2004).
Scholars repeatedly concluded that heritage is a significant value driver for luxury brands (Riley et al., 2004; Fionda and Moore, 2009; Wuestefeld et al., 2012; DeFanti et al., 2014; Ardelet et al., 2015; Dion and Borraz, 2015; Dion and Mazzalovo, 2016). However, the associations between heritage and luxury among different age groups are still unclear. For instance, heritage brands face a unique challenge of preserving an image anchored in history and subject to complex associations (Balmer, 2011). The ongoing relationships between the past, present, and future (Schultz and Hernes, 2012) were an emergent topic in the heritage literature.
In this paper, we define what we refer to as “Heritage Luxury Brands” (HLB) as any luxury brand that has a long history and have successfully retained original features or corporate stories from the past....