Brand heritage valorization in luxury yachts European market

Brand heritage is an exclusive characteristic of those brands existing from centuries. Especially in luxury sectors, it is often synonymous of quality, reliability and uniqueness of the brand or of its products. Therefore, it should be used as an important promotion factor by the firms, companies and brands which have it. However, brand heritage valorisation with operational marketing activities is not always efficient as it could be. The primary aim of this thesis has been that of deeply studying all the elements characterising heritage, through a complete analysis of the existing academic literature on this argument, and then applying the four factors' model (connection with the past; founder's figure and his family; initial craftsmanship working techniques; people who made the product/brand famous) to ten brands operating in luxury yachts European market (for Italy: Baglietto, Benetti, Codecasa and Riva; for Netherlands: Feadship; for France: Beneteau and Jeanneau; for Germany: Lürssen and Nobiskrug; and for the United Kingdom: Camper & Nicholsons). Subsequently, it has been tried to find out how all or some of the aforementioned brand heritage factors have been valorised through different operational marketing activities (in particular: historical corporate archive and/or company museum; events and exhibitions; celebrities-brand associations; heritage merchandising, iconic product relaunch, heritage editions; web heritage; logo heritage; film heritage; book heritage; boutique heritage or emotional showcases).