Brand heritage ownership and perception: An application in the Turkish food industry

Brand heritage is recognized as one of the future priorities in brand research. In this research, which focuses on the food sector, a two-way study was conducted to reveal the business and consumer perspectives. A case study was used in the qualitative part where it was aimed to reveal the common strategies followed by businesses in managing brand heritage. Strategies for creating and maintaining the brand heritage were revealed by conducting in-depth interviews with the representatives of 12 businesses with brand heritage. Interview questions were prepared by making use of the five basic components of Mats Urde's brand heritage in the literature. The data were analyzed using the MAXQDA 2018 program with content analysis. The most important elements of companies with brand heritage are; ethical values, perceived quality, brand image, brand name strategy, R&D strategy/technology strategy, brand name strategy and technology strategy. The effect of brand heritage on consumers' brand attitude, brand trust, brand awareness and purchase intention was investigated using a quantitative method based general scanning model (descriptive). Convenience sampling method was used and online survey application was carried out. Data obtained from 720 people wereanalyzed by regression analysis using SPSS 25.0 statistical program. As a result of the analysis, it has been determined that brand heritage positively affects brand awareness, brand trust, purchase intention and brand attitude. In addition, the attitude of brand heritage in the food industry changes according to age groups; It is among the findings that it does not change according to gender and educational status. The limitation of our study is that it covers certain areas of the food industry. The concept of brand heritage is a concept that has just begun to be studied, especially in the literature of our country. When the studies are examined, it has been determined that very few studies have been carried out in the field of brand heritage, both consumer and business-oriented. For this reason, it is considered that our study will make important contributions to the literature of our country and the world.