One of the most significant challenges of modern strategic marketers refers to the ability of expressing the authentic value of fashion brand. This is particularly important for luxury goods, which are able to effectively impact on customers’ social attitude and behavior. Hence, pertinent literature is progressively focusing on the role of authenticity as a strategic element for marketing theory. Specifically, three elements have been associated with brand’s authenticity, namely quality commitment, heritage, and sincerity. In the present research we apply a validated empirical instrument concerning brand authenticity and its aforementioned three elements. Precisely, we will present and discuss the results of a survey implemented in the Tuscany region (Italy), thus aiming at investigating possible differences and/or similarities characterizing Tuscan customers’ perception of luxury brand authenticity. A structural equation model will be conceptualized and assessed in order to analyze the existing relationships between brand’s authenticity elements, namely quality commitment, heritage, and sincerity. The results confirm the hypothesized significance of these relationships among variables. Further, we will introduce the notion of mythopoiesis, which will be interpreted as a strategic vehicle able to appropriately communicate the traditional values, culture, and historical symbolic meanings of luxury fashion brand. Actually, marketing mythopoiesis results in being an effective element for translating a historical ‘stock’ of heritage into a strategic ‘flow’ of narrative capabilities by marketing managers.

The value of luxury brand is always latently charged with elements of sacredness. Fashion expresses symbolic meaning that allows customers’ experience to be sacralized in many ways. Hence, customers’ necessity to express their existence is also possible thanks to luxury brand which is defined as exclusive and image-driven. Building on Georg Simmel’s sociological theory of equalization and differentiation behavior in fashion and René Girard’s mimetic theory of sacred, this paper investigates the sacredness in perception of luxury brands. Different customers stereotypes can be defined resulting in what we conceptualize as the sacred experience framework. Specifically, the authors identify three dimensions of the framework, namely the active and passive attitude, the personal and social motivation, and the idolatrous and realist perspective. The framework can be used for strategic positioning of luxury brand. The focus is on risks and threats related to idolatrous positioning of luxury brand and opportunities related to realist positioning. Luxury brand sustainability is possible by fostering the symbolic myth that reflects customer sacred experience. The aim of this paper is a formulation of a general theory of luxury, which to our best knowledge has not been well defined yet. Such a new theory of luxury requires that customers’ needs and motivations theories show how existential desire should be fueled also by sacredness.

The aim of this study is to understand how companies radically change their approach to marketing after the introduction of a process innovation. Thanks to multiple case studies in Arezzo gold luxury district, it is possible to build a conceptual framework subsequently tested through System Dynamics simulation technique.

In a period of crisis and uncertainty as the current, heritage marketing is a suitable strategic opportunity because it associates values and meanings to products and services by using corporate heritage or brand heritage in order to communicate identity, continuity and stability. Heritage marketing seems particularly appropriate for high symbolic fashion brand that require the ability to transmit identity and to generate symbolic meanings. In relation to high symbolic fashion brand, an opportunity for heritage marketing strategies is to narrate the myths associated with the brand. In fact, literature has highlighted that fashion brand can be associate to the concept of myth thanks to the presence of symbolic values and meanings. Heritage and myth are concepts linked to time and progression. Therefore, they should continually innovate and evolve in relation to the community of reference in order to find a balance between continuity and renewal. However, a risk of heritage marketing strategies is to merely celebrating the past thus losing the ability to generate and regenerate myths and symbolic values. This paper aims to provide a critical contribution to heritage marketing literature highlighting the risk of obsessive fixation in the celebration of the past. In order to avoid this risk, the paper proposes that a possible solution might be the integration of mythopoesis which is the ability to generate and regenerate myths in order to create and perpetuate sense and meaning through narrative.