Nostalgia and its marketing applications

Abstract

Undoubtedly, in the past decades marketing campaigns evoking nostalgia messages as a main tactic to capture the attention of consumers have been pervasive. Companies such as Coca Cola, Volkswagen, General Motors, Old Navy, Schwinn, and Ford have used nostalgic stimuli with success on their global marketing campaigns. In the marketing context, the term nostalgia is defined as a preference (general liking, positive attitude or favorable affect) towards experiences associated with objects (people, places or things) that were more common (popular, fashionable or widely circulated) when one was younger (in early adulthood, in adolescence, in childhood or even before birth (Holbrook and Schindler, 1991). Savvy marketers should understand the different mechanisms in which consumers evoke nostalgia and how this emotion can potentially improve positive reactions toward ads, products and brands.