Introduction
The term ‘nostalgia’ can be defined in many ways; it can be described as the feeling of home- sickness, or a desire to return back to a particular time period. place, people, or thought in one’s life. Mark Fisher has defined the term ‘Formal Nostalgia’ as the absolute perseverance of ‘recognizable forms’. According to him, the twentieth century was all about introducing something new to the world; the 21st century, however, is leaned towards the feeling of exhaustion and finitude (Lindblom, 2020). This is the source of nostalgia in this modern world, which business organizations are utilizing in commercial purposes. This essay, therefore, will discuss the nature of nostalgia and the ways in which business firms are utilizing the same to increase their monetary gains.
Nostalgia and advertising According to Hunt and Johns (2013), nostalgia basically means homesickness, it refers to an individual’s desire to experience another time or place. Since people in today’s world are less attached to any particular place compared to the people in previous centuries, many individuals try to escape the uncertainty of this world with the help of nostalgia. According to the author,
this attitude is nothing but another form of escapism which many tourism and travel companies are using commercially. As per Chrostowska (2010), capitalism successfully identified the profitable aspect of nostalgia. The primary goal of business organisations is to provide people with all those things that they don’t have, and to fulfil their needs and emptiness with appropriate tangible and intangible commodities. Nostalgia is nothing but a sense of emptiness that can be fulfilled by positive past experiences. UK based grocery chain Tesco for example, used old Christmas home videos to stir up the beautiful holiday memories of their customers in 2013. According to them, they wanted to show people how actual Christmases used to look like before the age of edited images and videos
(Campaignlive.co.uk., 2013). There are a number of organizations that rely on nostalgia marketing. Forever 21 is one of them. Forever 21 is a California based apparel brand that was founded in 1984. This organization is currently present in the Middle East, Asia and the UK. this company keeps teaming up with other companies to surprise its customers and recently they have formed and collaboration with the Pepsi company to introduce a new clothing line. This new clothing line is completely dependent on the strategies of Nostalgia Marketing (MacCollum et al., 2016). This new clothing line includes jackets, shirts, shorts, tops and so on along with unique Pepsi logo inspired by the fashion trends of the 80s and 90s (Griswold, 2020). even though the ‘vintage vibe’ is the core USP of their new products, they have made sure that these products are suitable for people in the summer of 2019. People might feel nostalgic at the beginning
when they look at these new products, however, this new clothing line includes items such as bodysuits, bike shorts, slide sandals and so on. The primary message is, if someone failed to buy the interesting clothes in the 80s or 90s, then this is his/her chance to purchase them. Products related to Nostalgia can easily be produced through the channels that are dedicated to
the symbolic economy. The idea of the symbolic economy gained popularity due to a book written by Sharon Zukin, ‘The Culture of Cities’. According to this book, the world economy is not solely dependent on the industrial and agrarian industries anymore, the advent of the
media industry and information technology has given birth to a new concept, the concept of knowledge societies. In this case knowledge and symbol-based inputs shape both the social patterns and the economy (Singh, 2015). The three major factors in the symbolic economy are media, tourism and entertainment. Media platforms, like newspaper, television, radio. Movies and recently the social media are responsible for creating many needs that do not have any logical foundation. For example, people use a face wash to wash their faces instead of regular soaps just because the television adverts tell them to do so (King, 2019). The new clothing line mentioned above also tries to reach customers depending on the iconic Pepsi commercials featuring public figures such as Britney Spears. People’s need for entertainment also plays a crucial role in the symbolic economy. Life has become extremely fast these days; thereby individuals are constantly looking for escape routes. The entertainment industry has become one such option on which people are ready to spend a large amount of money. The popularity of food and beverage brands (KFC, McDonald’s, Pepsi etc.) has given birth to many
symbols which are popular across geographical barriers and national boundaries. The collaboration between Forever 21 and Pepsi is a result of such trends (King, 2019). It is essential to find out the factors that make nostalgia so useful as a marketing strategy. It
can be said that Nostalgia is a combination of four types of feelings. Those are the loss of time and space, loss of values and references, loss of autonomy and freedom and loss of authenticity and simplicity in life. Business organisations try to fulfil these needs by creating new products. The Stimulus Organism Response Model needs to be discussed in this context. According to Mehrabian and Russell’s SOR model, the environment should be considered as a stimulus (Emir et al., 2016). It contains several signs that result in internal evaluation and individual responses. Which means both the conscious and unconscious thoughts and perceptions of an individual can influence an individual’s emotions and feelings. People’s purchasing decisions often get affected by the way he or she interprets the environment. There are three dimensions to emotional responses, those are pleasure, arousal and dominance. High arousal within a comfortable environment generally results in approaching behaviour and within an uncomfortable environment causes avoidance behaviour. This factor is responsible for impulsive buying in many cases. Impulsive buying is nothing but a result of internal emotional and psychological factors and external persuasions of marketers (Hashmi et al., 2019). Marketers in the case of nostalgia marketing make sure that they are evoking positive responses among people through their activities. they successfully identify and trigger only the positive feelings to increase the attractiveness of their brand (Hunt and Johns, 2013). Marketers generally rely on 4 types of moments that are considered to be meaningful, those are the everyday past, uniqueness, tradition and transition. Each of these triggers acts differently. Marketers often resort to the trigger of permanence and tradition to make people feel secure and comfortable even during the time of transition. Popular culture is also an important part of a tradition which companies like Forever 21 are using to generate positive emotions within the minds of their customers. According to cultural analyst Raymond Williams, advertisements are nothing but organised magic.
They successfully hide the actual intention (profit-making) of an organisation by conveying strong messages. Insurance companies, for example, are there to make profits, owever, they portray themselves as a reliable entity to which a company can transfer its risks. The AIDA model of marketing communication shows how to take a customer from the state of unawareness (of the message) to the state of being an active buyer. Marketers are required to make people aware of a particular product so that they start noticing. The next stage is all about making people understand as well as believe the message. In this way, potential buyers become interested in a product or a brand (Prathapan et al., 2018). This message is responsible for arousing customers’ desires to look at the product so that they finally make their purchasing decisions. Nostalgia marketing is not different in any way. Marketers in this case utilise several positive traditional symbols to evoke people’s interest in their products. Forever 21 for example has been selling clothes for many years. Their partnership with Pepsi will increase the level of interests of those customers that have some kind of connections with the old and iconic Pepsi commercials and fashion trends of the 80s and 90s. not only Forever 21 but also popular corporate giants like Microsoft decided to utilise the aspect of nostalgia to draw people’s attention to their ‘New Internet Explorer’. In one of their viral adverts, they directly targeted the 90s kids and mentioned many aspects of their childhood days to establish a connection between them and their product which also belonged to that time period (Mlot, 2013). Individuals’ pasts do not contain positive memories only; negative memories are important elements of the past. However, nostalgia generally refers to positive feelings, especially when it comes to the marketing world. According to Hunt and Johns (2013), the ‘sanitisation effect of memory’ is responsible for fading out many negative feelings and thoughts regarding past events. It always presents the past as an interesting place to revisit. People tend to believe that the values and references they miss in their current lives can be rediscovered in their past. According to the authors, nostalgia is not necessarily associated with the true past. The marketers only focus on the positive aspects of nostalgia. Retro gaming has become a popular trend in the past 20 years. Retro-gaming can be defined as ‘present-day gaming’ which generally uses the original appliances, devices and applications that individuals used to use to play games in the old days. Retro gaming started gaining popularity when the computer and digital games were ruling the gaming industry (Suominen, and Vaahensalo, 2019). These machines and gaming services are maintained using modern technologies so that people do not undergo any negative experiences that they used to undergo in their past. Walmart for example, placed retro arcade gaming machines in their stores to attract customers during a holiday season. Walmart has a separate section for arcade games, where a virtual catalogue shows the available options to the customers (Graf, 2017). Some of their throwback Sega or Atari games can be played on the flat-screen smart TVs. Forever 21 also relies on people’s nostalgia; however, the products they offer are totally appropriate for the modern era and they are capable of meeting the current needs of the customers. The aspect of demography is very important when it comes to nostalgia marketing. According to Hunts and Johns (2013), younger people (in their 30s) are extremely nostalgic about a ‘critical period’ in their lives (around 24 years. memorable and life-changing experiences. They are more concerned with the individual freedom that they have lost due to many changes in their lives (marriage, having a child etc.). Older people are not that serious about a particular period in their lives as they have experienced many ups and downs throughout their long journey and they consider many other aspects in their lives to be more important than a particular period of time. Nostalgia is not necessarily associated with past experiences; pseudo nostalgia is another important factor when it comes to Nostalgia marketing. People often find themselves to be emotionally attached with places that they have not experienced personally but experienced through a media. Films, theme parks, television, tourist attraction etc are also responsible for generating the feeling of Nostalgia within human minds. This type of nostalgia is known as pseudo nostalgia. Disneyland and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter are some of the theme parks that solely depend on such
Pseudo Nostalgia. Therefore, Nostalgia can be viewed as an outcome of people fantasy-prone and escapist attitude. Companies including Forever 21 needs to make sure that they are targeting the right kind of audience depending on the products they are offering.
Conclusion
This essay concludes that nostalgia is an important factor when it comes to marketing. People in this modern world are more interested in avoiding uncertainties than experiencing something new. Business firms are relying on this needs of individuals to create new products. However, such endeavours never take individuals back to their real pasts as the sole purpose of the business firms is to make profits and they always focus on generating positive feelings in individuals’ minds while in reality, past contains both positive and negative experiences. Business firms including Forever 21, Walmart, and Tesco want to provide people with a sense of security and permanence in this rapidly changing world. However, such tactics can encourage people to make purchasing decisions in an illogical and impulsive manner.
