Nostalgia, Retro-Marketing, and Neuromarketing: An Exploratory Review

In the last decades, neuroscience has provided an excellent comprehension of the impact of marketing outputs on cognitive and emotional processing. Understanding what constitutes the neurobiology of consumer decision-making has been the aim of neuromarketing since the beginning. New notions regarding the value of emotions in consumer preferences have changed the way companies develop their actions towards marketing and communication. Nostalgia has emerged as an effective strategy for reinforcing the positioning of established brands. Because of the nature of emotions in nostalgia and the trendy relationship between neuromarketing and emotions in business, this research offers an exploratory bibliographic review to set the guidelines that help in understanding the interplay between retro marketing, nostalgia, and neuromarketing on marketing consumption. This review was carried out in 3 phases: a) review of unstructured information, b) analysis, organization, and synthesis of content, and c) conclusions. Nostalgia is manifested through marketing stimuli that arise from people’s internal memory and, therefore, the feelings derived from cognitive responses (attitudes) followed by a particular behavioral reaction. Research points out the lack of literature/studies regarding neuroscientific methodology into nostalgic empirical research.