Brand authenticity and corporate museums: an esplorative research of Gucci museum

In this paper we propose to explore the role played by corporate museums in the search for authenticity by individuals. The museum would consent to offer its visitors a holistic view of the brand’s original culture and values, in a synthesis that integrates past and present. From this point of view, the experience offered to visitors would reinforce their connection to the brand, consolidating their involvement and loyalty towards it. The corporate museum would therefore arise as a vehicle to create and consolidate a profound relationship between brand and consumers. Only a few of the research efforts sustained so far have tried to explore empirically the museum’s potential as a platform to enrich and strengthen brand authenticity. In this paper attention is focused on a museum created by a well known luxury brand (Gucci) for the purpose of investigating its role as a tool for authentication, capable of strategically connecting past, present and future. After a synthetic overview of the literature on brand authenticity (§2 ) and a brief introduction of the Gucci Museum (§3), the methodology of the explorative research will be explained (§4) and finally, the main results obtained will be presented (§.6).