Towards a Co-Creational Perspective on Corporate Heritage Branding

This theoretical chapter links the field of corporate heritage (branding) scholarship with the emerging co-creation perspective and approach to corporate branding. By adopting a co-creational perspective, this chapter argues that corporate heritage and corporate heritage brands are always also co-created by multiple stakeholders (internal and external) and not only marketers or managers alone. It suggests that stakeholders actively shape the temporal relations between past, present and future that are constitutive for corporate heritage (brands). By drawing on the insights from the corporate heritage (branding) literature and combining it with a synthesis of the co-creation perspective, the chapter outlines key co-creation processes characteristic of corporate heritage (brands): valorising, (re)interpreting, manifesting, appropriating, augmenting the past in the present and for the future as heritage. These processes are linked to temporal co-creation as an additional generic form of corporate brand co-creation in addition to the co-creation of value, meaning, identity and experience. Finally, a conceptual framework is developed to show the links between these different processes and dimensions of co-creation as they apply to corporate heritage (brands).