Power of Brands in Recalling Nostalgic Memories Among Young Adults: An Exploratory Study

Conventional branding theory suggest that the purpose of brand identity is to give the brand a structure for what it should stand for in customers’ minds (Kapferer 2004; Keller 2001) and the brand image is referred to as the meaning a brand has for consumers (Aaker 1996), which is primarily understood as an outcome of brand identity. From a broader perspective, Keller (2003) introduced the concept of brand knowledge, referring to a consumer’s cognitive brand representation, which includes information about a brand that the consumer has acquired over time, including awareness, attributes, benefits, images, thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and experiences. From a consumer memory perspective, these brand-related feelings and experiences are stored in consumer ‘nostalgic memories’ that play a major role in shaping their future brand relationships (Braun-Latour et al. 2006; Nedungadi 1990; Biehal and Chakravarti 1986). Therefore it is important to understand how and why these nostalgic brand memories exist in consumer mind addressing calls of research in evoking nostalgic memories in consumer behaviour and branding (Grisaffe and Nguyen 2011; LaTour et al. 2010; Havlena and Holak 1991). The aim of the study is to investigate the power of classic brands in retrieving nostalgic memories. Specifically the study examines; (a) Do these brands evoke nostalgic childhood memories? (b) Why these brands are associated with nostalgic experiences? and (c) Can these nostalgic memories be connected in advertising strategies?