Reactions to nostalgia marketing and consumer psychological wellbeing amid the COVID-19 pandemic Közgazdaságtudományi

35 OTDK, Közgazdaságtudományi Szekció, Marketing - fogyasztói magatartás Tagozat.

Reactions to nostalgia marketing and consumer psychological wellbeing amid the COVID-19 pandemic

Különdíj: t

Hallgató: Nguyen Thi Thao Huong
Szak: Kereskedelem és Marketing, Képzés típusa: ba, Intézmény: Budapesti Gazdasági Egyetem, Kar: Kereskedelmi, Vendéglátóipari és Idegenforgalmi Kar

Témavazető: Dr. Papp Vanda - főiskolai docens, Budapesti Gazdasági Egyetem Kereskedelmi, Vendéglátóipari és Idegenforgalmi Kar

Nostalgia marketing is the practice of conveying or using nostalgia – a sentimentality for the past - in marketing. The need for more research on nostalgia marketing is further justified as the consumption of nostalgic products and media is gaining in popularity. There are three common strategies often used in nostalgia marketing: packaging, storytelling, and heritage branding. This research explored the effectiveness of these marketing strategies on customers with different levels of nostalgia proneness.
Psychologically speaking, nostalgia is a positive emotion that arises from and mitigates negative states such as lack of belonging and fear of mortality. In a macro landscape, nostalgia and nostalgic consumption have also been found to increase in troubling times. Therefore, when the psychological well-being of the general population is deteriorating due to the Covid-19 pandemic, a question arises: is there an increase of positive reactions to nostalgia marketing in conjunction with the worsened mental health? The paper also answers whether customers who are prone to nostalgia have better reactions to nostalgic advertising.
A survey is used to collect information on respondents’ nostalgia proneness, attitudes towards selected nostalgia marketing activities, and psychological well-being during the pandemic. To examine the effects of nostalgia marketing on respondents, their brand interest and purchase consideration, in addition to their reactions to the marketing activities, are collected. Respondents’ psychological well-being is reported in four aspects: fear, boredom, loneliness, and anxiety. Then the data is evaluated with statistics techniques including factor analysis, correlations, and regression analysis.
As a result, the result found that packaging is the most effective nostalgia marketing strategy. All marketing strategies work better with those that relate to them. There is also a causal relationship between psychological negativity and customer reactions to nostalgia marketing and that nostalgia proneness has a mediating effect on customer customers’ reactions. It can be interpreted that psychological problems do drive the consumer positive reactions to nostalgia marketing, and this effect is buffered on those who have high levels of nostalgia proneness.