Every culture has its own traditional handcraft that embodies the original cultural identity value. However, the emergence of Modern era resulted in mass production of cultural crafts by machine. Although machine-made crafts have innovative value, however, they are also criticized for cultural commoditization. As a result, many authentic crafts have been modified to meet the present day requirements and lost their authenticity. On the other hand, the situation for machinery products that were spawned during the Modern era is different. Those products were mass produced from the very start. Thus, in contrary to cultural embedded handcrafts, the practice of handmade may add more value to machinery products and further enhances their authentic value.
This research aims to investigate the differential effects of “hand-made” on cultural embedded crafts versus machinery products. Relying on brand authenticity literatures, and a 2 X 2 X 2 experimental study, this study finds that handmade enhances perceived uniqueness and symbolic authenticity for both cultural embedded crafts and machinery products. However, in terms of quality commitment and heritage authenticity, hand-made has positive effect only on cultural crafts but not machinery products. Furthermore, this study finds that it is hand-made induced symbolic authenticity that positively influences preference for machinery products; on the other hand, it is hand-made induced uniqueness that influences preference for cultural embedded crafts. Moreover, heritage authenticity has no direct effect on preference or purchase intention for either type of objects. The managerial implications for cultural preservation organizations and brand managers are discussed in this thesis.

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