The value of history : a study about the use of history by companies using corporate heritage marketing and historymarketing

Our thesis will examine how and why companies use their historical past within two different theoretical frame-works on how to use history within marketing to enhance their perceived value among their consumers, employeesand stakeholders. One of these is prevalent within Sweden, History marketing, and the other, Corporate heritagemarketing, is more common internationally and specifically in Italian literature. Our aim is to study these by ex-amining companies that clearly use these two different ways of utilizing history withing marketing, how theyestablish their characteristics and then compare these with each other. The main question of the thesis is: why docompanies use their historical past using marketing and what is the purpose of the companies archival records?We chose nine companies based on these two theoretical frameworks and then examined the websites that thesecompanies use to communicate their historical past. Five websites from five companies within Sweden that usehistory marketing, and six websites from four Italian companies that use Corporate heritage marketing. From ourmaterial we study the differences, similarities and conclude what value these companies place in their use of historywithin marketing.