The concept of nostalgia, defined as “a sentimental longing for the past” (The New Oxford Dictionary of English 1998) is gaining more attention in consumer psychology (Loveland, Smeesters, and Mandel 2010, Zhou et al. 2012; Wildschut et al. 2010) as contemporary consumers experience more feelings of loneliness (Wang et al. 2012) and the economic recession brings yearnings for the warm and cozy past. Marketers have responded to the trend with resurrected brands, throwback versions, vintage slogans and jingles, and recreating nostalgic moments in ads (Brown, Kozinets, and Sherry 2003; Elliott 2009). Previous research documented that nostalgia bolsters social bonds and satisfy consumers’ need to belong with others (Wildschut et al. 2006; Loveland, Smeesters, and Mandel 2010). In addition to the function of enhancing social-connectedness, we consider nostalgia’s another function of increasing self-positivity in this study and show that embedding agentic self-concept on a nostalgia ad derives self-positivity and communal self-concept inserted in a nostalgic ad engenders social-connectedness. We also propose that consumers’ attachment style moderate the effect of nostalgia on purchase intention of the advertised products. Anxiety dimension of attachment style primarily affect the way a person sees self, so activating anxiety increased the accessibility of agency (Bartz and Lydon 2004) and anxiety attachment was either negatively (Collins and Read 1990; Shaver et al. 1996; Zuroff, Moskowitz, and Cote 1999) or positively (Bartz and Lydon 2004) associated with agency, whereas, avoidance dimension of attachment style reflects the negative perspective toward others and communion depicts an other-orientation, so activating avoidance decreased the accessibility of communion (Bartz and Lydon 2004). In this study we investigate when and how agentic vs. communal nostalgia ad content influences purchase intention of the product. We predict that consumers with a high anxiety attachment can derive more self-positivity through agentic nostalgia ad content than communal content which enhances purchase intention toward products, and that low avoidance consumers derive more social-connectedness from communal nostalgia ad content than agentic nostalgia ad content and the social-connectedness raises purchase intention.
Three hundred sixty two participants were randomly assigned to one of eight conditions in a 2 (nostalgia content: agentic vs. communal) × 2 (anxiety related attachment: high vs. low) × 2 (avoidance related attachment: high vs. low) between subjects design. Attachment style was manipulated by asking the participants think about a relationship that fits the description provided to them out of four attachment style combination (high vs. low anxiety × high vs. low avoidance) and to generate a visual image in their mind of a person and a situation with whom and in which they had this type of relationship (Swaminathan et al. 2008). Then, we asked participants to evaluate a nostalgia advertisement for digital camera. The content of the two print advertisements was manipulated via photo images to convey a distinct self-concept (agency or communion). The agentic nostalgia ad featured images of past successes/achievements, having time to myself, having confidence in myself, overcoming challenges and expanding my horizons, whereas the communal nostalgia ad featured my family, someone I loved, my friends, my pet, being part of a group or community, and having someone to depend on (Hart et al. 2011). Both ads contained taglines of “because past is too meaningful to let it pass you by” and “re-live the moment” to induce nostalgia. After being exposed to the ad, participants provided their responses on the extent to which they felt nostalgia, self-positivity, social connectedness, and their intention to purchase the product. They also completed the Revised Experiences in Close Relationships Scale (ECR, Brennan, Clark and Shaver 1998) for anxiety and avoidance manipulation check.
A three way ANOVA revealed significant main effects of anxiety (F(1,308)=121.973, p<.01) and avoidance (F(1,308)=9.003, p<.01) and two-way interaction effects of nostalgia content×anxiety (F(1,308)=8.991, p<.01) and nostalgia content×avoidance(F(1,308)=61.424, p<.01) on purchase intention. The main effect of nostalgia content(F(1,308)=.363, p>.1) and the three way interaction effect of nostalgia content×anxiety×avoidance(F(1,308)=.452, p>.1) were not significant. Further analyses were conducted focusing on the significant two-way interactions.
A two-way ANOVA on purchase intention using anxiety and nostalgia content as factors yielded a significant effect of anxiety(F(1,312)=100.179, p<.01) and nostalgia content×anxiety interaction (F(1,312)=7.281, p<.01). Planned contrasts revealed that for the participants primed with a high anxiety attachment, agentic nostalgia content enhanced purchase intention more than communal nostalgia content (F(1,157)=5.349, p<.05, Magentic, high anxiety=4.75, Mcommunal, high anxiety=4.17), and for the participants primed with a low anxiety attachment, nostalgia content did not have a significant effect on purchase intention (F(1,155)=2.235, p>.05, Magentic, low anxiety=2.50, Mcommunal, low anxiety=2.87). A two-way ANOVA with the same factors on self-positivity generated a significant effect of anxiety (F(1,312)=44.150, p<.01) and nostalgia content×anxiety interaction (F(1,312)=52.089, p<.01). Follow-up contrasts showed that agentic nostalgia content induced more self-positivity than communal content for the high anxiety participants(F(1,157)=26.377, p<.01, Magentic, high anxiety=4.15, Mcommunal, high anxiety=3.17), whereas, for the low anxiety participants, communal nostalgia content induced more self-positivity than agentic content (F(1,155)=26.690, p<.01, Magentic, low anxiety=2.48, Mcommunal, low anxiety=3.23). When the participants viewed agentic nostalgia ad, high anxiety participants perceived more self-positivity enhanced than did low anxiety participants (F(1,158)=97.346, p<.01), whereas communal nostalgia ad generated no difference between high and low anxiety participants (F(1,154)=.162, p>.1).
A series of regression analyses were run to test for the mediating role of self-positivity on the effect of nostalgia content on purchase intention moderated by anxiety attachment. When the participants’ attachment style were high anxiety, agentic nostalgia content (0=agentic vs. 1=communal nostalgia content) raised the perceived self-positivity (β=-.985, p<.01) and the self-positivity enhanced purchase intention (β=.434, p<.01). When both nostalgia content and self-positivity were included in the model, originally significant nostalgia content (β=-.585, p<.05) became insignificant (β=-.185, p>.1) while the mediator remained significant (β=407, p>.1). Preacher and Hayes (2004)'s bootstrap procedure confirmed a significant indirect effect of self-positivity with CI = -.7092 to -.1676. Muller, Judd, and Yzerbyt (2005)'s mediated moderation analysis also confirmed that when high anxiety participants were exposed to nostalgia advertisement with agentic content, it induced more self-positivity than when ones with low anxiety saw the advertisement.
Next, a two-way ANOVA using avoidance and nostalgia content as factors yielded a significant main effect of avoidance (F(1,312)=6.269, p<.05) and a interaction effect of nostalgia content×avoidance (F(1,312)=43.038, p<.05) on purchase intention. Planned contrasts revealed that when the participants' avoidance was low, communal content induced more purchase intention than did agentic content (F(1,155)=20.086, p<.05, Magentic, low avoidance=3.24, Mcommunal, low avoidance=4.40), whereas for high avoidance participants, agentic content generated more purchase intention than did communal content (F(1,157)=22.997, p<.05, Magentic, high avoidance=4.01, Mcommunal, high avoidance=2.67). Agentic nostalgia content enhanced purchase intention more when avoidance was high than when low (F(1,158)=6.642, p<.05), whereas communal content was more effective when avoidance was low than when high (F(1,154)=54.909, p<.01).
Another two-way ANOVA using avoidance and nostalgia content as factors was estimated on social-connectedness. Main effects of nostalgia content (F(1,312)=49.932, p<.01) and avoidance (F(1,312)=38.209, p<.01), and the interaction effect (F(1,312)=11.016, p<.05) were significant. Further analyses revealed that the participants with low avoidance felt more social connectedness from communal content than from agentic content (F(1,155)=44.184, p<.05, Magentic, low avoidance=3.01, Mcommunal, low avoidance=4.34), and the same results emerged for the participants with high avoidance (F(1,157)=8.945, p<.05, Magentic, high avoidance=2.64, Mcommunal, high avoidance=3.12). Communal content induced more social-connectedness for low avoidance participants than for high avoidance participants (F(1,158)=50.609, p<.01), but agentic content didn't bring a difference between high and low avoidance participants (F(1,154)=3.716, p>.05).
Mediational analysis revealed that for low avoidance participants, communal nostalgia content hightened social-connectedness (β=1.338, p<.01) which led to enhanced purchase intention (β=.563, p<.01). Originally significant nostalgia content (β=1.165, p<.01) became insignificant (β=.529, p>.1) when both nostalgia content and social-connectedness were included, while the social-connectedness remained significant (β=476, p<.01). Bootstrap procedure (Preacher and Hayes 2004) yielded a 95% CI of .2137 to .5688 which confirmed that the indirect effect was significant and mediated moderation analysis (Muller, Judd, and Yzerbyt 2005) also supported that low avoidance participants derived more social connectedness from nostalgia advertisement with communal content than did high avoidance participants and feeling more social connectedness enhanced purchase intention of the nostalgia product.
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