Heritage branding is a common marketing strategy that has been shown to increase product appeal. Here, we find that certain forms of heritage branding can also have potentially negative consequences by leading consumers to react negatively to changes made to the brand’s original, flagship product—even if those changes objectively improve it. We demonstrate that when firms engage in heritage branding that emphasizes a brand’s longevity, consumers evaluate enhanced products less favorably than the original versions of those same products due to decreased perceptions of continuity authenticity. We demonstrate this effect across a variety of product domains (e.g., cosmetics, cookware, and food products), using online experiments as well as in-person product trials. Moreover, we provide a framework that distinguishes between types of heritage branding cues that lead to negative evaluations of enhanced products versus those that do not. Finally, beyond identifying an important boundary condition based on specific aspects of heritage branding, we further show how the negative evaluations of enhanced products can be attenuated if brands reframe product changes as continuous with the brand’s origins. Together, these studies contribute to existing theory regarding heritage branding and authenticity, while also providing a number of practical recommendations for heritage brands.

Existing research has examined why consumers are drawn to things from their past (personal nostalgia). However, little empirical work has examined why consumers prefer products that were never a part of their personal history (communal nostalgia). For example, a consumer may purchase vinyl records even though she grew up listening to mp3 files. Here, we find that one reason why consumers may be drawn to communal nostalgia is that it can provide a sense of social stability. Drawing on System Justification Theory (Jost & Banaji, British Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 1994 and 1–27), we demonstrate that perceived threats to the social system increase consumer demand for communal nostalgia and enhance the pleasure consumers get from certain retro products. We further show that a retro product’s ability to provide a sense of stability to consumers mediates the effect of system justification on communal nostalgia. Together, these findings suggest that communal nostalgia may be driven by its own unique motivational antecedents that are distinct from personal nostalgia, as individuals seek to connect to aspects of society that are perceived as stable and unchanging.