Nostalgia in Consumer-Brand Relationships

Abstract

This research focuses on the nostalgic connections that consumers build with brands. The study_s purpose was to determine the roles played by consumer characteristics and brand experiences in predicting a consumer_s nostalgic connection with a brand. Although there has been little focus in the academic literature on nostalgia in the context of brands, much has been written about how nostalgia enables individuals to make sense of life_s changes, how consumers develop nostalgia for product categories and specific objects, and how marketers may benefit from understanding nostalgia in the context of consumption. Literature reviewed resulted in the formulation of hypotheses predicting relationships between the (independent) consumer characteristics of age, gender, ethnic sub-culture, age of peak brand imprintation, nostalgic proneness as well as the sensory, intellectual, affective and behavioural dimensions of brand experience and the (dependent) variable of consumers_ nostalgic brand connections. Feedback from two focus groups, experts in the field of consumer behaviour, and a pilot survey of 200 South African metropolitan consumers was used to adapt previously used scales. In order to ensure that scales used to test hypotheses were valid and reliable, the four dimensions of brand experience were reduced to two: affective and intellectual brand experience and; behavioural brand experience. Hypothesised relationships were tested on a further 180 South African consumers living in metropolitan areas.