Keywords

1 Introduction

Nostalgia—i.e., the sentimental longing for the past—(Davis, 1979) is used increasingly as a means to differentiate media products and media brands. For example, the nostalgic, silent, black-and-white movie The Artist won five Oscars in 2012, including the award for best movie. Moreover, Argo deals with the hostage crisis in Iran in 1980 and took the best picture as well as the film editing Oscar in 2013. In addition, 12 Years a Slave went home with three Oscars in 2014. Successful series such as Boardwalk Empire reenact the 1920s. Starsky and Hutch, The Green Hornet, and Spiderman from the 1960s and 1970s are continuously adapted to the big screen, attracting media recipients. The examples show that films can be or develop into nostalgic media brands on the content level (e.g. story, actors, black-and-white) and producer level (e.g. Disney, Warner Bros.). But what are the (motives and) effects of personal and historical nostalgia being ‘omnipresent’ in entertainment media, such as films?

This question represents a significant research gap because extant (empirical) nostalgia studies are largely not from the media context (e.g. Muehling & Pascal, 2011) and do not often distinguish between personal and historical nostalgia (e.g. Holbrook, 1993). However, personal nostalgia relates to autobiographical memories “The way I was” whereas the latter refers to an era even before someone’s birth “The way it was” and consequently contains more cultural knowledge and remembrances (Stern, 1992, p. 16). Hence, the distinction between personal and historical is highly needed because the effects for media brands ‘using’ the one or other can differ greatly, which was shown at least in the advertising context (e.g. Marchegiani & Phau, 2010a, 2010b, 2012; Muehling & Pascal, 2012). All in all, we can say that the (motives and) effects of the consumption of personal and historical nostalgic films and media brands are so far underresearched. Therefore, our quantitative surveys aim to provide insight into the gratifications and effects of personal and historical nostalgic film content as branding strategy for entertainment media for the first time. More precisely, based on mood management theory (Zillmann, 1988) and attribution theory (Kelley, 1973) our research questions are as follows:

RQ1:

How do age, gender, educational background, media usage frequency, involvement, nostalgia proneness, and mood impact the level of personal and historical nostalgia that is evoked through films?

RQ2:

How do personal and historical nostalgia influence attitudes towards the brand and buying behavior, word-of-mouth, and re-experience intentions with regard to films?

RQ3:

How do personal and historical nostalgia affect affective response and mood after the consumption of films?

Results and implications e.g. on consumer behavior are particularly useful for media brand management, media marketing, and media producers. Nostalgia should receive more attention since it could influence brand awareness, attitudes, sales, and customer loyalty positively. Moreover, researchers coming from the social psychological field attribute an increasing relevance to nostalgia at the level of the individual because in the present unstable, turbulent times of financial, economic, and educational crises, society tends to return to traditional values. Correspondingly ‘retro’ is a trend and nostalgia as a form of escapism from negative emotions and stress can be observed (e.g. Sedikides, Wildschut, Routledge, Arndt, & Zouh, 2009; Wildschut, Sedikides, & Cordaro, 2011).

2 Theoretical Background

2.1 Definition and Differentiation of Personal and Historical Nostalgia

Nostalgia can be defined as a yearning for yesterday (Davis, 1979) and is a bittersweet or wistful emotion, feeling, or mood, with primarily positive functions for individuals (Baker & Kennedy, 1994; Belk, 1990; Wildschut et al., 2011, Wildschut, Sedikides, Routledge, Arndt, & Cordaro, 2010, 2011). Nostalgia elevates positive affect, self-regard, social connectedness, and existential meaning (e.g. Hepper, Ritchie, Sedikides, & Wildschut, 2012); nostalgic memories are idealized, highly emotional, and consistent. Nostalgia can be learned through socialization, and is felt frequently in everyday life (Stern, 1992; Wildschut, Sedikides, Arndt, & Routledge, 2006). Holbrook and Schindler’s (1991, p. 330) definition from marketing describes it as “a preference (general liking, positive attitude, or favorable affect) towards objects (people, places, or things) that were more common (popular, fashionable, or widely circulated) when one was younger (in early adulthood, in adolescence, or even before birth).”

Historical nostalgia (=H.N.) is a preference or yearning for people, places, or things from a distinct time or decade in the past, even before one’s birth. H.N. memories do not include one’s experiences, but viewing a past era (e.g. the 1960s or 1970s), attitude toward life, society, or circumstances from that time as superior to the present (Stern, 1992). Consequently, H.N. refers more to cultural knowledge and remembrances stored in the semantic part of memory where knowledge and factual information is saved to comprehend contexts (Tulving, 1972). Popular media examples that elicit H.N. include the movie 12 Years a Slave or the English television series Downton Abbey, which depicts the lives of an aristocratic family and their servants at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Personal nostalgia (=P.N.) is a yearning for the lived past, referring to experienced emotional memories (e.g. childhood or first love). Autobiographical memories are more about “the way I was” than “the way it was” (Stern, 1992, p. 16). Media content that deals with topics such as birthday parties, graduations, weddings etc. elicit P.N. Personal nostalgic memories are encoded in, stored in, and retrieved from individual episodic memories, part of long-term memory that stores self-relevant information (e.g. what one’s own wedding was like). A media example is the movie Dirty Dancing. Such personal nostalgic media content and brands help to build, rehab, and give continuity to the person’s own identity (Belk, 1990; Sedikides, Wildschut, Gaertner, Routledge, & Arndt, 2008). Various disparities between P.N. and H.N. emphasize a need for differentiation in respective contexts.

2.2 Nostalgia in Media, Mood Management, and Attribution

Little empirical research has been done on nostalgia in media contexts; particularly lacking are studies on the two different nostalgia types in and through media. Holbrook (1993) and Holbrook and Schindler (1994, 1996) elucidate consumer patterns of cultural products and their relationships with nostalgia proneness. Their studies demonstrate that young adult preference peaks for film stars, popular music, and (older) films form at the ages of about 14, 24, and 27, respectively. A positive attitude toward the past leads to a shift of preference peaks toward earlier years, but they do not measure nostalgic responses, distinguish between personal and historical nostalgia or investigate actual films, so there is little accord with our approach. Regarding films, a theoretical exploration of how nostalgia (personal and historical) is present in the German Heimat film genre was published recently (Ludewig, 2011). Nostalgia is assumed to fulfill basic needs for grounding in a movie context, but the book lacks empirical findings. It stems from the cultural sciences and thus does not use a media psychological or management perspective. Moreover, we can build on studies from marketing, but although new scales for the two nostalgia types have been developed recently (Marchegiani & Phau, 2007, 2011a), they largely suffer from measurement limitations (e.g. Baker & Kennedy, 1994; Barrett et al., 2010; Chou & Lien, 2010; Pascal, Sprott, & Muehling, 2002) and call for further research on nostalgia (Muehling & Pascal, 2011, 2012; Muehling & Sprott, 2004) that would allow us to direct and evaluate (nostalgic) media content more easily.

Our research is underpinned by mood management as well as attribution theory bridging media and management research streams. Using the uses and gratifications approach from communication sciences, recipients choose certain media products, content, or brands to fulfill their needs such as information, social identity, and entertainment (Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1974; Katz & Foulkes, 1962; McQuail, 1994; McQuail, Blumler, & Brown, 1972; Severin & Tankard, 1997). According to mood management theory, that is, a specification of uses and gratifications and prevalent for the entertainment media in this case films, media preferences and selection depend on the recipients’ aim to maximize positive mood (Zillmann, 1988). Correspondingly, nostalgic media consumption is based on its high(er) aptitude for escaping from everyday life, coping with stress and negative affect compared to non-nostalgic media. This assumption can also be supported by studies coming from the social psychological field that ascribe those positive functions to nostalgia (e.g. Batcho, 1995, 2007; Batcho, DaRin, Nave, & Yaworsky, 2008; Sedikides et al., 2009; Wildschut et al., 2011). Furthermore, nostalgia helps to form, maintain, and rehabilitate identity, which could be another reason why audiences are attracted to it (Wildschut et al., 2006, 2010, 2011) [see Paus-Hasebrink and Hasebrink (2015) as well as Ots and Hartmann (2015)]. Applying attribution theory (Kelley, 1973), we can state that the audience likely attributes higher, positive subjective value or quality and (self) relevance to nostalgic media because e.g. for personal nostalgia they recognize a content in a series of observations which are stable over time and relate it to positive emotional and autobiographical memories. In the case of historical nostalgia the content is not necessarily recognized or familiar, but attributions result from positive associations to the era (e.g. 1960s) and/or the cultural relevance and high credibility (e.g. slavery) that again forces elaboration processes (Petty & Cacioppo, 1981, 1986). Those attributions induce beliefs, expectations, motivations, and attitudes leading to certain behavior, in our case media preferences, selection, customer loyalty, and affective response or enjoyment (ibid.; Kelley & Michela, 1980).

However, since extant studies on nostalgia lack the media context and at least in advertising found disparities in P.N. and H.N. effects it is reasonable to examine empirically which effects of nostalgia occur with movies and whether they are similar when compared to advertising. Hypotheses derived from these theories and the states of the art summarized above are the following:

H1:

The level of P.N. and H.N. evoked through movies is higher for older (25+) compared to younger individuals (18–25) (Batcho, 1995; Davis, 1979; Holbrook & Schindler, 1996).

H2:

The level of P.N. and H.N. induced through movies is higher for females compared to males (Holbrook, 1993).

H3:

High education leads to more P.N. and H.N. through movies compared to lower education (Schweiger, 2007).

H4:

Negative mood impacts the level of P.N. and H.N. aroused through films positively, contrary to positive mood (Wildschut et al., 2006, 2011).

H5:

High involvement results in more P.N. and H.N. through movies compared to low involvement. The impact on P.N. is stronger than on H.N. (Muehling & Pascal, 2012; Suckfüll, 2007).

H6:

High media usage frequency leads to more P.N. and H.N. through films.

H7:

Nostalgia proneness influences P.N. and H.N. through films positively (Holbrook, 1993).

H8:

P.N. and H.N. affect the attitude towards the movie and behavioral intentions (=buying, word-of-mouth, re-experience) positively. P.N. has a higher impact than H.N. (e.g. Muehling & Pascal, 2011).

H9:

P.N. and H.N. influence the affective response to the movie positively; P.N. more than H.N.

H10:

P.N. and H.N. through films impact mood positively.

3 Methods and Analyses

The studies were conducted using online surveys from 446 demographically heterogeneous German subjects (e.g. age = 18–56; with different educational backgrounds) from May to August 2013 in favor for quasi-representativeness. After testing for outliers according to the outlier labeling rule (Hoaglin & Iglewicz, 1987; Hoaglin, Iglewicz, & Tukey, 1986), we calculated ANOVAs and regressions in SPSS.

3.1 Pretest 1 and 2

To answer the question of which up-to-date popular films evoke which type of nostalgia in media recipients we pretested (n = 229) online a film pool of the 41 best movies released between 2010 and 2013 (top three US-Box-Office; ratings between 7.0 and 10.0, diverse genres, incl. remakes, etc. see Appendix). Each respondent was randomly exposed to six rotating film titles, posters, and short descriptions for at least 30 s (=seven groups). Afterwards, the individuals responded to familiarity, popularity, personal and historical nostalgia scales (only the item with highest factor loading), and demographics.

In sum, 217 respondents (m = 116, f = 101) between 18 and 55 (M age = 26) participated in our first pretest (see Appendix for the complete results of the pretests). The Muppets (M P.N. = 3.47) and Toy Story 3 (M P.N. = 3.23) evoked the highest level in personal nostalgia and were selected for the primary studies. Regarding H.N. the stimuli The King’s Speech (M H.N. = 4.62) and Chico & Rita (M H.N. = 4.54) showed highest means.

However, H.N. means were not fully satisfying and we assumed the values would improve by including the complete H.N. scale. Therefore, we conducted a second pretest (n = 12; m = 6, f = 6; M age = 48.33). The second pretest was identical to the first one except that we used the official film trailers of The King’s Speech, Chico & Rita, complemented by Hyde Park on Hudson and Titanic in 3D and the complete H.N. scale. Those were selected for the main studies as inducing the highest H.N. levels.

3.2 Primary Studies

Each respondent was randomly exposed to the two rotating P.N. or H.N. film trailers (=2 × 1 between subjects design) for 2–3 min that were selected through the pretests after they had answered the global mood scale. After the stimulus the individuals again responded to mood, personal and historical nostalgia scales, affective response to brand, attitude toward the movie (story), behavioral and purchase intentions, nostalgia proneness, media usage frequency, (cognitive and affective) involvement, genre preferences, and demographics.

Again, 217 respondents between 18 and 56 (M = 28) participated in our main study online surveys (m = 104, f = 113) from which 112 rated the P.N. stimuli (The Muppets M P.N. = 3.8; Toy Story 3 M P.N. = 4.1) and 105 participants rated the H.N. stimuli (Hyde Park on Hudson M H.N. = 3.1, Titanic in 3D M H.N. = 3.9). The greater part was higher educated (A levels 47 %, master or bachelor degree 40 %); only a minority of 13 % had a lower education.

The ANOVAs in SPSS revealed the following:

  • Age impacts personal but not historical nostalgia significantly. Thus, H1 can be supported for P.N. (The Muppets F(1, 110) = 7.32, p < 0.05; Toy Story 3 F(1, 110) = 16.97, p < 0.05) but not for H.N. (Hyde Park on Hudson F(1, 103) = 0.12, p > 0.05; Titanic in 3D F(1, 103) = 0.36, p > 0.05).

  • Results speak for no gender differences (personal nostalgia F(1, 110) = 0.16, p > 0.05; historical nostalgia F(1, 103) = 2.68, p > 0.05).

  • Descriptively it seems as if educational background tends to influence historical nostalgia, but not personal nostalgia (personal nostalgia F(1, 110) = 0.41, p > 0.05; historical nostalgia F(1, 103) = 2.49, p = 0.088).

  • Mood and involvement do also not affect personal and historical nostalgia through films significantly (mood P.N.: F(1, 110) = 1.29, p > 0.05; mood H.N.: F(1, 103) = 0.49, p > 0.05; involvement P.N.: F(1, 110) = 0.71, p > 0.05; involvement H.N.: F(1, 103) = 0.68, p > 0.05).

Also the regression’s results with involvement as a dependent variable to answer if personal or historical nostalgia alter the involvement speak for non-significance (involvement P.N.: R 2 = 0.003, β = 0.053, p > 0.05; involvement H.N.: R 2 = 0.004, β = 0.066, p > 0.05). All in all, involvement seems to play an inferior role. The same applies for media usage frequency (media usage frequency P.N.: F(1, 110) = 0.49, p > 0.05; media usage frequency H.N.: F(1, 103) = 0.49, p > 0.05) and nostalgia proneness (nostalgia proneness P.N.: F(1, 110) = 0.07, p > 0.05; nostalgia proneness H.N.: F(1, 103) = 0.51, p > 0.05). Hence, Hypotheses H2, H3, H4, H5, H6, and H7 cannot be supported.

To investigate the impact of personal and historical nostalgia on attitude, buying intention, positive word-of-mouth intention, intention to re-experience, affective response, and mood after the consumption, linear regressions in SPSS were calculated (Table 1). We find that personal and historical nostalgia through film does have significant positive effects on the attitude toward the movie or film brand, the intention to buy the movie, the affective response to the movie and the mood (after the movie). Thus, H8, H9, and H10 are supported. Comparing the effects of the two types of nostalgia on attitudes towards the movie or film brand, their positive impact is quite outbalanced in the film context. This finding is contrary to prior advertising research, showing that personal nostalgia through advertising has stronger positive effects on attitudes towards the brand than historical nostalgia (e.g. Marchegiani & Phau, 2011a). Buying intentions and the intention to recommend and re-experience the film or film brand are influenced positively as well, and according to our hypotheses more strongly by personal nostalgia compared to H.N. With regard to the affective response to the film and the mood after the film’s consumption, historical nostalgia leads partly to stronger positive effects.

Table 1 Impact of personal and historical nostalgia on attitude, buying intention, positive word-of-mouth, intention to re-experience, affective response, and mood
Full size table

4 Discussion and Implications for the Branding of Content

This article aims to identify and concretize influence variables on P.N. and H.N. in a media context and, above all, the effects of personal and historical nostalgic contemporary films or film brands. To summarize, we can state that we derived relevant findings regarding age (H1), gender (H2), educational background (H3), mood (H4), involvement (H5), media usage frequency (H6), and nostalgia proneness (H7) through a more differentiated approach concerning personal and historical nostalgic films and film brands. We find no significant effects of gender, educational background, mood, involvement, media usage frequency, and nostalgia proneness on P.N. or H.N., but of age on P.N. Therefore, attention should be paid to the customers’ age in the case of personal nostalgia to detect target group adequate film content/brands resulting in high P.N. levels. Considering the variable involvement our findings are crucial because in the marketing context higher involvement for nostalgic ads compared to non-nostalgic ads explained (more) positive consumer responses (Muehling & Pascal, 2012). However, in the case of personal or historical nostalgic films or film brands involvement seems to play an inferior role.

Personal and historical nostalgia effects on attitude, buying intention, affective response, and mood after consumption are highly significant. The personal nostalgia effects exceed those of historical nostalgia regarding buying, word-of-mouth, and re-experience intentions. However, on affective response (H9) and mood (H10) historical nostalgia’s influence is partly stronger. These results are very relevant because extant studies from marketing mainly come to the conclusion that personal nostalgia is superior to historical nostalgia (Marchegiani & Phau, 2011a; Muehling & Pascal, 2011, 2012). The effects of the two nostalgia types on attitudes towards a film or film brand are outbalanced, which is why we come to the conclusion that in the movie context both nostalgia types are valuable marketing instruments.

Because this study examines for the first time such a huge sample of contemporary highly ranked film stimuli (41, Top 3 US-Box-Office, 2010–2013), with 446 heterogeneous respondents in all, we can derive media management implications of high value. First of all, our goal is to strengthen the awareness of the more or less neglected phenomena of personal and historical nostalgia. Media management should keep in mind that personal and historical nostalgia have far-reaching positive consequences regarding attitudes, buying intentions, word-of-mouth, intention to re-experience, affective response, and mood. Nostalgia fosters customer engagement, interaction, and participation in the form of word-of-mouth. Nostalgia, especially personal nostalgia gives meaning and personal relevance to media brands and thereby enhances brand awareness, remembrance, and value. There are of course other key success factors to consider such as stars, genres, content, budget, and marketing. Though P.N. and H.N. do not guarantee success, they may largely contribute to it. Thus, there is a positive relationship between the use of this growing and deeply ingrained human need and economic values. Hence, personal and historical nostalgic content can better, and with lower risks, be produced and continued or recycled, e.g. through prequels and sequels, because consumers are less likely to respond with boredom, negative affect, or psychological reactance. Good examples are The Muppets or Toy Story 3 which are still liked by consumers and successfully make a profit at the cinema. Toy Story 3 even broke all animation movie records with its highest box-office takings of 940 million US dollars.Footnote 1 Correspondingly, personal and historical nostalgia are promising instruments with which to foster media brands and line extensions i.e., besides sequels, ancillary markets such as merchandising (=consumer products) or theme parks.

Interpreting the results from pretesting in more detail, nine out of 41 films in the filmpool (22 %) evoked a moderate level of personal or historical nostalgia (M < 4.69). This means that almost one quarter of the movies are nostalgic, prevalently personal nostalgic (with two exceptions) and animation movies (e.g. Despicable Me, Tangled, How to Train your Dragon, Marvel’s the Avengers, Chico & Rita). Four out of those nine productions stem from Disney and its subsidiary Pixar so that for those media brands personal nostalgia seems to be a relevant brand value or even core brand value that they specialize in. P.N. forms a source of their success story bearing in mind Disney masterpieces such as Tarzan, The Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Peter Pan, The Jungle Book, or Bambi and computer animated Pixar productions such as Monster Inc, Toy Story, Cars, and Finding Nemo. (Personal) nostalgic movies also play a role in the portfolios of the media brands Dreamworks (How to Train your Dragon, Shrek, Antz), Warner Brothers (Harry Potter, Batman, Superman), and Universal (Despicable Me, The Hulk, American Pie). The success of Paramount Pictures is based on mainly historical nostalgic productions such as Titanic, The Godfather, Once Upon a Time in the West, and Forrest Gump. This is particularly true for the indie labels Paramount Vantage and TOBIS (e.g. No Country for Old Men, There Will be Blood, 12 Years a Slave, and American Bullshit). In the film lists of Universal can be found the historical nostalgic examples Gladiator, The Mummy, and Ray.

As mentioned above, animation movies evoke personal nostalgia in media recipients due to their visualization mode, because they remind them of their own lived past and childhood. To maximize P.N. content should be produced or remade that stems from the target group’s teenage or childhood days and/or is widely recognized. However, even if the movie itself is relatively unknown, meaning that not (yet) many people have watched it, the recognition value alone already leads to positive effects. Another interesting result was that animation movies are able to evoke historical nostalgia as well (e.g. Chico & Rita) and even better than apparently more historical movies (within our filmpool) such as The King’s Speech, Django Unchained, or Fetih 1453. Thus, to evoke historical nostalgia we do not necessarily need a drama or specific story and characters which have a relationship to real history. Since historical nostalgic animation movies seem to be quite rare they could represent an attractive market gap.

Furthermore, for media management it is important to know that not only old but also new brands, movies, contents, and characters/actors can elicit both types of nostalgia. New productions that resemble old ones (e.g. The Artist) and thereby are associated to a past era can elicit H.N., meaning that they do not have to be original or stem from a distant past. Our study revealed that unknown as well as well-known stimuli can be used as cues for H.N. This was shown by using some very recent movies in our survey that had not yet been released in Germany.

5 Limitations and Further Research

In summary our studies contribute to the research gaps mentioned in extant studies to examine recent, unknown, less popular stimuli, and also stimuli with moderate nostalgia levels (Marchegiani & Phau, 2010a; Muehling & Pascal, 2012). We identify the relevance of personal and historical nostalgia in the movie context, different presentation modes are used (short description with film poster vs. trailer), and we improve the sample representativeness by not surveying students (e.g. Marchegiani & Phau, 2012; Muehling & Pascal, 2011). Besides this, we include hitherto neglected consequences and audience responses such as affective response (e.g. Marchegiani & Phau, 2011b).

One limitation of our sample is that it partly suffers from a lack of representativeness, especially with regard to the subsamples with higher age (50+), lower education, and rare media usage. This leads to a comparison of more or less unequal, small subsample means. Therefore the results referring to those hypotheses (H1, H3, H6) should be interpreted carefully and require further study. Additionally, there is need for further research e.g. concerning nostalgia proneness showing no significance, which could be due to measurement limitations. Hence, in future studies a more recent and reliable scale should be used.Footnote 2 Another limitation regarding the variable mood before the stimulus that showed no significance could be explained by low variance. Thus, future studies could manipulate the mood before the stimulus positively and negatively to solve this problem.

Further directions for future research are in examining different genres, for example a comparison between nostalgic comedies and dramas, no animation movies, but “normal” feature films (for P.N.), or series, and the motives of personal and historical movie consumption. Other media products should be dealt with, e.g. video games because the video game industry adapts game classics such as Pac-Man to new video game consoles and handheld devices (e.g. smartphones and tablet PCs) attracting a lively gamer subculture, the retro gamers (Suominen, 2007, 2012). Research questions to be considered could include identification, repeat and binge viewing (see McDowell, 2015), and cross platform behavior (see contributions by Doyle, 2015 and Shay, 2015). Different kinds of media brands on various levels, such as the media company itself like Disney, the movie as an own brand (e.g. The Muppets), the content and its features (e.g. The Artist), or the actors (e.g. Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe) could be of high interest too, to concretize nostalgic cues and their effects. Thus, personal and historical nostalgia can be used more effectively as a competitive advantage in the contemporary era of digitalization, saturated media markets, and media crises.