Not every business wants to transform: Strategic pathways for legacy-driven businesses in market decline

Businesses in declining markets are often advised to pivot or transform to survive. However, legacy-driven businesses operate under a different logic, where commitment to tradition shapes both strategic choices and organisational identity. In this article, we draw on case analysis of Japanese sake breweries to examine how such firms respond to sustained market decline. Rather than interpreting resistance to change as inertia, we show how cultural embeddedness and legacy orientation structure strategic decision-making. We develop a decision-oriented framework that identifies four strategic pathways, namely, legacy preservation, legacy progression, legacy stewardship, and legacy ambidexterity. Each pathway reflects a distinct way of leveraging legacy under conditions of market decline and entails specific organisational conditions and trade-offs. Our model offers a structured approach to sustaining tradition as a key strategy in industries where cultural and historical significance define success.