Reaching Back to Our Roots: Nostalgia as a “Green” Advertising Strategy

• In Event: Green Consumption and "Ecologically Just" Advertising

Abstract

Environmental, health, safety, and animal welfare considerations are frequently cited as the most important determinants of ‘green’ consumer behavior. As a result, marketers tend to employ message strategies that appeal to these concerns. However, there is some indication that nostalgia may play a role in consumers’ organic food decisions. Also, a growing body of research in the general marketing literature supports nostalgia’s effectiveness as an advertising strategy. Thus, using organic food as a green marketing context, this article examines the effectiveness of nostalgia-themed (versus health/environment) green advertising on consumers’ attitude toward the ad, brand, and their purchase intentions. A simple experiment (N= 302) found support for our hypotheses that nostalgia-themed organic food advertising will produce more favorable Attitude(Ad), Attitude(Brand), and Purchase than health/environment-themed organic food advertising. Neither nostalgia proneness nor past family experience with food and mealtimes moderated the relationship between ad-evoked nostalgia and all the predicted outcomes. Suggestions for organic food advertising and further research are provided.

Authors

• S. Senyo Ofori-Parku, University of Oregon

• karikarn chansiri