Governance-Based View of Corporate Brand Equity: An Empirical Study of Long Lifespan Firms

This study explores how corporate brand equity benefits from the unique heritage resources built over long time period. A heritage resource-based view (HRBV) framework is proposed to verify that culture, entrepreneurship and proprietary knowledge act as complementary resources ensuring competitiveness. This novel perspective uses an in-depth survey of 208 long lifespan firms to examine the mediating effects of continuous organizational capability development on brand equity when it is impacted by the differential effects of heritage. Our findings provide managerial precision to the quantifiable differentiation of corporate heritage by emphasizing how unique heritage resources, when moderated by a firm’s inheritance mechanisms, can be leveraged to strengthen internal capabilities and brand equity. Multigroup analyses, based upon analysis of privately owned and state-owned firms, was used to highlight how those private firms that use the benefits of enhanced heritage, inheritance mechanisms and organizational capabilities are able to optimize their corporate branding.