Blending the past and present in a retro branded music concert: the impact of nostalgia proneness
| Published date | 20 August 2018 |
| Date | 20 August 2018 |
| Pages | 484-497 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-08-2017-1546 |
| Author | Damien Hallegatte,Myriam Ertz,François Marticotte |
| Subject Matter | Marketing,Product management,Brand management/equity |
Blending the past and present in a retro
branded music concert: the impact
of nostalgia proneness
Damien Hallegatte and Myriam Ertz
Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Chicoutimi, Canada, and
François Marticotte
ÉSG UQÀM, Montreal, Canada
Abstract
Purpose –Retro branding is gaining unprecedented momentum. This study aims to empirically examine the moderating impact of nostalgia
proneness on the relationship between retro branding and consumer behavioral intentions in the music industry. Nostalgia and retro
branding are two paramount elements conceptually discussed in literature but rarely investigated together empirically despite their
interconnections.
Design/methodology/approach –An experiment including four different scenarios blending retro and contemporary stimuli was conducted on
181 subjects. Two rock band variables were manipulated: song set list (i.e. list of songs) and band lineup.
Findings –The findings suggest that mixing the past and present for a retro brand impacts consumer behavior. A more nuanced explanation is
suggested by showing that a retro brand has a strong effect on consumers’intentions to attend and willingness to pay, but not on their WOM
intentions, when these consumers are more prone to feeling nostalgia.
Originality/value –Nostalgia and retro branding appear to be interconnected concepts, but few studies have assessed how nostalgia
proneness can impact consumers’intentions toward a retro brand. Fewer have investigated consumers’intentions toward an experiential,
intangible retro brand.
Keywords Word of mouth, Intentions, Willingness to pay, Nostalgia proneness, Retro branding, Retro marketing
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Thanks to retro marketing in general, and retro branding in
particular, consumers can now purchase modified versions of
products or brands that fit today’s tastes and functionalities
while still referring directly to the past (Youn and Jin, 2017).
Retro marketing is “a generic term used to describe marketing
strategies capitalizing on the past to sell up-to-date products
and services”(Fort-Rioche and Ackermann, 2013, p. 497). As
such, retro marketing leadsto a form of consumption related to
the past as it establishes a connection with people, events or
objects that are presented as being somehow bound to a lived
past (Belk, 1990) or even to an indirectly experienced past
(Stern, 1992).
Within the realm of retro marketing, the marketing of retro
brands, or retro branding, is of increasinginterest to marketing
academia and managersalike because retro brands are based on
a tried and tested recipe (Youn and Jin, 2017). As updated
brands of the past, retro brands are also more appreciated by
consumers than those that did not evolve (Cattaneo and
Guerini, 2012). In the automobile industry, examples include
retro brand successes such as the VW New Beetle, PT Cruiser,
Fiat 500 series or MINI Cooper (Simms and Trott, 2006,
2007). Another fruitful example includes Pokémon Go, a free
location-based augmented reality game, which cleverly drew
upon the Pokémon series of the late 1990s-early 2000s, to
become the most used and profitablemobile apps in 2016 with
500 million downloads worldwide (Time Magazine,2016). As
envisioned by Brown(2001b), Reynolds (2011) suggested that,
“the first decade of the twenty-first century was dominated by
remakes, revivals, reissues, reinventions, re-releases and non-
stop recycling”(p. 637). Actually, the successful retro brands
launched in diverse industries such as clothing, electric
appliances, grocery products and music lead us to think that
retro branding is aimed to last for as long as there are old
marketing brandsthat can be retrothemed.
The widespread practice of retro branding is in sharp
contrast with its sparce coverage in the literature. For
marketing practitioners and scholars alike, the paramount
question about retro branding lies in finding the perfect blend
between the past and present.Second, retro branding strategies
are built on the implicit idea of an interwoven relationship
between the past and nostalgia (Pecot and De Barnier, 2017).
Nostalgia canbe defined as:
A yearning for the past, or a fondness for tangible or intangible possessions
and activities linked with the past, and is experienced when individuals feel
separated from an era to which they are attached (Sierra and McQuitty,
2007, p. 99).
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on
Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/1061-0421.htm
Journal of Product & Brand Management
27/5 (2018) 484–497
© Emerald Publishing Limited [ISSN 1061-0421]
[DOI 10.1108/JPBM-08-2017-1546]
484
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