Dongkrak Antik: Literature Study in Explaining Nostalgic Marketing and Digital Marketing

Abstract

Nostalgic marketing is widely used across consumer industries to elicit favorable attitudes and purchase intentions by activating memories, emotions, and identity-relevant meanings. Yet, the scholarly literature remains fragmented across related constructs such as nostalgia proneness, perceived authenticity, temporal distance, affective forecasting, and brand meaning while also differing in how nostalgia interfaces with digital marketing mechanisms. This literature study synthesizes major theoretical perspectives and empirical findings to explain why nostalgic marketing can be persuasive, how it is operationalized in branding communications, and how these effects may be amplified or transformed in digital environments. Drawing on research in consumer psychology, marketing communication, branding, and digital media studies, the review shows that nostalgia functions through multiple pathways: (1) emotional regulation and positive affect, (2) social and identity signaling, (3) cognitive fluency and perceived credibility, and (4) value-laden interpretation of brand history. In digital contexts, nostalgic content can be distributed and personalized at scale through recommendation systems, platform affordances, user-generated content, and interactive formats, which may strengthen engagement while also increasing risks of perceived manipulation or inauthenticity. Methodologically, the paper emphasizes how constructs are measured (e.g., nostalgia as a state versus trait) and how study designs (experiments, surveys, and observational platform research) affect causal inference. The study concludes with an integrative conceptual framework and research propositions to guide future work.