This is the post-print of: The Corporate Museum: A New Type of Museum Created as a Component of Marketing Company; a pre-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in The International Journal Of The Inclusive Museum, Vol. 6, Issue II, 2014, pp. 29-37, following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available from: http://ijz.cgpublisher.com/product/pub.177/prod.267 The Corporate Museum: A New Type of Museum Created as a Component of Marketing Company Ksenia Katarzyna Piatkowska Gdansk University of Technology, Poland Abstract: A new type of museum appeared – the corporate museum. The museum institution in this instance has been used as a new marketing device for building corporate identity strategies. Their inception is not based on the existing context of a place, but appears to be integrated with the corporate identity program, exposing the company’s values and philosophy. The corporate museums are thematic, commercial buildings, owned by a particular firm, where the history of the company brand and products development is presented. Architecture of corporate museums must doubtless be identified with the brand, reflecting the high quality of a brand’s products. The surveys were carried out on freshly constructed corporate museums like Porsche, Mercedes and BMW Welt. They are located next to the factories where the brand products are manufactured. The immediate vicinity of the corporate museum to the production zone allows the exhibition to extend to the production line. Corporate museums generate considerable benefits, as the cultural potential of a space where the museums are built increases. Their outside-the-city location economically activates forgotten zones of the town. Corporate museums extend the city’s tourist and cultural offer and their buildings become a recognizable element in a city’s marketing image. These facts prove that museum institutions can be successfully used for commercial purposes. Keywords: Corporate Museum, Corporate Architecture, Architecture in Branding Process, Marketing Strategy, Commercialization Introduction: A new type of museum has appeared – the corporate museum. The museum institution is used as a new marketing device for building corporate identity strategies. Generally museum planning is the analysis and practice enabling the preservation and interpretation of the physical culture by arranging all components that made up the museum as a whole for better functioning and optimal efficiency of this institution (Lord, Lord, 2001). Social and economic factors play a significant role in the process. At the same time it is essential to elaborate the museum program based on market analysis describing the group of target consumers (Silberberg, 2001), to define the museum’s mission, to set aims and objectives of created collections and to define its cultural or historical potential (Lord, Lord, 2001). The demand for the traditional museums arises due to individual and social needs (Frey, Meier, 2003). In the case of corporate museums, the cause is quite the opposite and refers to the precisely planned financial calculations of a particular company. Therefore, nowadays the museum institution plays not only a service role, but is used as an instrument in promotion strategies creating corporate market advantages. The corporate museum benefits from the key part of social understanding - originally reserved for traditional museums – and establishes competence in defining identity as the basis for marketing strategies and successful sale of branded products. Identity and any movements striving to determine it are a very hot issue due to globalization identity crises (Korzeniowski, 2006). At the same time a museum is the social space competitive to other, common city public spaces. Corporate museums exploit this quality of the traditional museum too, inviting the visitors into social but branded space, dedicated to one