Corporate museums and brand authenticity: Explorative research of the Gucci Museo

In this paper we explore the role played by a fashion company’s museum as a driver of brand authenticity. The museum could offer to its visitors a holistic view of the brand’s original culture and values, in a synthesis that integrates past and present, reinforcing the visitors’ connection to the brand. Drawing on the existing literature, this paper explores the attributes that, according to the objective and subjective dimensions of brand authenticity, characterize the role of corporate museums in the individual quest of authentic brands. Furthermore, in addition to the objective and subjective dimensions, the paper aims to understand how the brand’s authentication tools (pioneering, protagonist in history, stylistic continuity, geographic roots, personalization and characterization) may have been influenced by the perceptions of authenticity that the museum has preserved. Finally, according to the self-expressive dimension of brand authenticity, the paper explores how the brand’s authentication tools may have been influenced by the perceptions of authenticity of visit experience. This paper will focus on the museum created by Gucci. After a synthetic overview of the literature on brand authenticity, the methodology of explorative research will be explained, and finally the results obtained will be presented.