Date of Completion
2024
Document Type
Honors College Thesis
Department
Grossman School of Business
Thesis Type
Honors College
First Advisor
Dr. Carolyn Bonifield
Keywords
Consumer Behavior, Nostalgia, Dictator Game, Collective Nostalgia
Abstract
Nostalgia is pervasive in today’s advertising landscape and for good reason. Research has shown that people exposed to advertising with nostalgic themes have higher purchase intention and greater willingness to spend. Most research on nostalgia’s effect on consumer behavior treats nostalgia as a singular construct. This experiment expands the focus to include collective nostalgia, which are memories made with other close people rather than being exclusive to oneself. It explores collective nostalgia’s impact on consumer behavior and the effects it has on participants’ desire for money. It posits and then tests the hypothesis that when collective nostalgia is triggered, participants will value money less than their peers. While the experiment (a variation on the dictator game) did not yield results that support the hypothesis, it nevertheless brings up important questions that could potentially help marketers more effectively utilize their advertising dollars.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Williams, Jasper, "Collective Nostalgia’s Effect on Consumer Behavior" (2024). UVM Patrick Leahy Honors College Senior Theses. 675.
https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/hcoltheses/675