The influence of brand heritage versus brand innovation on consumer purchase intent

Abstract

With the rapidly evolving business landscape, many marketing managers and companies who place a high value on their brand to better understand their consumers tend to be caught between maintaining their longstanding legacy and the drive to be innovative. A question that has dwelled in the mind of the brand and marketing managers - Do consumers choose a brand because of its maturity and existence over time, or do they choose one due to its novelty and innovativeness? This research examined the influence of specific factors, such as brand heritage and brand innovation, on consumers' purchase intention within the South African context. Innovation is further explored at the brand and category levels. Adopting a positivist research paradigm, the study employs a quantitative explanatory and deductive approach, proposing three hypotheses. Using a factorial design underpinned by the Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) Model, the experiment involved presenting the respondents at random, one of eight treatment conditions from the category of large household appliances. Each condition included an image of a specific branded refrigerator and manipulated information about the brand's age and product features, symbolising the level of innovation present. Using the statistical test of a MANOVA to determine the significant relationship between the factors whereby trust was a covariate, the findings reflected that neither heritage nor innovation played a pivotal role in the consumer intention to purchase. However, trust was found to be the most essential component in the consumer's mind. This has implications for brands that see themselves as innovative, as the acceptance of innovation is overridden by trust, which can affect the sustainability of the future business. Consequently, regardless of a brand’s longevity, perceived innovation by consumers, or positioning by the firm, such factors do not ensure customer purchase intention in the absence of trust. Some of the findings in this research could be of great importance for marketing managers who position innovation at a product or brand level and historic brands that rely on their long-standing existence.