Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on New Trends in Management, Business and Economics
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Using the Nostalgia Appeal in Advertising: A Study on its Effect on Brand Perception
Hande B. Turker, V. Aslihan Nasir Isler, Berna Sirman, Ozge Ozelli
ABSTRACT:
As consumers seek comfort and familiarity in uncertain times, advertisers can tap into their longing for the good old days and hope to inspire positive feelings about brands through nostalgic messages. Nostalgia appeal can be used in advertising in many ways, i.e. using old footage, clothing, objects, behavior and habits, music, people, scenes and slices of life from the past. Usually, the aim of using this kind of appeal is to evoke a sympathetic affective state on the target audience so that a desired level of positive brand perception is formed. In this study, the impact of using the nostalgia appeal for four different brands in digital video ads has been explored through focus groups. Four focus groups with four participants each have been employed for this purpose, each representing a different age group, since age might play a natural confounding role in consumers’ level of remembering and their attitude toward remissions of the past in each ad. Video ads including many elements of nostalgia of four very well-known and established brands in the Turkish market were selected, each having the theme of celebrating the brand’s history along with the memories of the past. Digital video ads of a bank, a candy brand, an airline and a detergent were shown to the respondents and they were asked to respond to a set of questions regarding how successful they think the nostalgia appeal has been used in each one, what kind of emotions they evoked on them and whether this ad affected their attitude towards and perceptions of the brand. In the focus groups, consumers’ general disposition toward nostalgia marketing and their ideas about its effectiveness specifically on their own age group were also investigated. It was found that nostalgia marketing is an effective appeal for all four brands for higher age groups. General effectiveness of nostalgic messages was high and all ads instigated high levels of likeability, however, this did not necessarily improve consumers’ existing perception of the brands in all cases. While the nostalgia appeal reflects on brand perceptions in a positive way for two of the ads, it does not have such an effect for one specific ad and has a mixed set of results for different age groups in another one. In other words, a definitive link between attitude toward the ad and attitude toward the brand was not found. The study has a preliminary and exploratory nature aiming to shed light on how nostalgia marketing is perceived and what further research questions can be generated in this realm for future studies.
keywords: advertising appeals, brand perception, focus group, nostalgia marketing, video ads