| Consumer nostalgics has become new interesting topic of marketing researchers since 1990s because of the obvious nostalgia psychology over society. Consumer nostalgic literature mainly includes three aspects:its connotation such as definition, classification, measurement; nostalgia incentives, namely some elements evoking a sense of nostalgic; and nostalgic consumption preferences and behavior. Although the research on nostalgia has clear clues, it is scattered, and lack of analyzing environmental factors because of being an emerging field and its complexity of nostalgia phenomenon itself. Moreover, the research is mainly around Americans and Europeans. Therefore, research on Chinese nostalgia psychology and behavior is of great significance. As nostalgic consumption involves a wide range, such as shopping, purchase and consumption, generally nostalgia purchase issues are usually studied. It is the purpose of the dissertation to explore main antecedents of nostalgia purchase behavior in China context.Through adopting theory of marketing, psychology and sociology, the research explores nostalgia and its effects evoked by specific stimuli with considering the consumers themselves and social environment, and designs and tests of consumer nostalgia purchase intention model, to reveal the transmission mechanism of nostalgia psychology and formation mechanism of nostalgia consumption. Main research work includes the following four aspects:(1) The subjects’theories foundation of consumer nostalgia is Analyzed. From psychological view, nostalgia being a individual psychological characteristics, emotion theory and self-concept theory have impact on consumer nostalgia; Sociological theory of social identity and personal identity, analysis of social development and reform constitutes the foundations of sociology, which can analyze formation mechanism of nostalgia consumption; Owing to consumer nostalgia deriving from consumption experience theory, the formation and utility of nostalgia consumption can be interpreted by symbolic value of nostalgic goods in semiotics and utility theory in behavioral economics.(2) The conceptual framework of nostalgia consumption behavior and its critical inflencing factors in the China context is preliminarily refined. Based on literature study, Chinese customer buying behavior of nostalgia products and its influencing factors are sutdied through using semi-structured depth interviews and NVIVO software for the purchase of nostalgia empirical study.(3) The model of nostalgia purchase intention of the individual factors is constructed, and transmission mechanism of consumer nostalgia is proved. The theoretical foundation of the model is consumer behavior models, for example Howard-Sheth, and emotional arousal theory, which is the content of study one.(4) The model of nostalgia purchase intention of the external environmental factors is developed. According to Howard-Sheth and other consumer behavior models, combining preliminary findings of grounded theory, the study constructs the nostalgia purchase intention model of key external factors, incuding three parts, such as external environmental factors, consumer internal factors and behavior response, which is the content of study two.According to above models and hypotheses, the study one designs a single factor experiment. Experimental manipulation factor is the type of nostalgia stimulus which are chose by survey results from 100 MBA and adult students. The experiment is conducted sampling MBA students in Shanghai and Anhui, and 259 valid samples are received. In date processing, many methods are adopted to test the hypothesis, such as reliability analysis, factor analysis, ANOVA, correlation analysis, and structural equation modeling. The study two makes questionnaire survey and collects 156 valid questionnaires in six cities,China. Many methods are adopted to test the hypothesis, including reliability analysis, factor analysis, independent samples t-test, ANOVA, and structural equation modeling.The valuable conclusions of the dissertation are as follows:(1) The results from qualitative analysis based on grounded theory reveal that: First, Nostalgia is a typical psychological characteristics of interviewers, and there are pervasive nostalgia purchase behavior, which they show the practical value of the topic in the Chinese context; Second, Nostalgia consumption behavior is inflenced commonly by the product itself, emotion and cognition factors, personality characteristics, external environment factors. Cognition and emotion factors play an important role in the transmission process of nostalgia phychology; Third, It also finds three mechanisms driving nostalgia consumption behavior, namely, preferences mechanism, compensation mechanisms and defense mechanisms.(2) The experimental results from study one show that:First, Positive nostalgic emotional response, stimuli-related mental image, and consumer nostalgic proneness are important factors of nostalgia transmission mechanism, and influence consumer nostalgia purchase intention; Second, different types of stimuli can evoke different levels of nostalgic emotion and mental image. Compared to non-nostalgic products, nostalgic products enable arouse more nostalgic emotion and mental image. Nostalgia products of direct experience evoke consumers more nostalgic emotion than that of indirect experience, however, nostalgia product of indirect experience generate more mental image than that of direct experience; Third, Nostalgia proneness moderates nostalgic psychological and behavioral intentions. Consumers can be classified into high and low noastalgia proneness because of their different nostalgic proneness traits. For consumers of high or low noastalgia proneness, the relation sbetween variables are different, such as consumer emotional response and purchase intention, stimuli-related mental image and purchase intention, consumer emotional response and product attitude, etc. Therefore, different nostalgic proneness traits can affect consumer emotional response, mental imagination, and lead to different consumer attitudes and behavior intention.(3) The empirical results from study two show that:First, Media information dependence, interpersonal influence from reference groups and environmental insecurity are major external inflence of nostalgia purchase intention, these factors impact nostalgia purchase intention through nostalgia memory; Second, The dimension of nostalgic memory is reconstructed according to results of factor analysis. Nostalgia memories includes personal nostalgia memory from direct experience and history nostalgia memory from indirect experience, which is consistent with nostalgia classification at fourth chapter; Third, External environment factors have differences correlation with two types nostalgic memory. Media information dependence has respectively significant correlation with personal nostalgia memory and history nostalgia memory, which reflects the catalyst role of media in the formation of strong nostalgia psychology and nostalgic consumption desire; Insecurity perception of environment has only correlation with personal nostalgia memory. Interpersonal interaction inflence has also correlation with personal nostalgia memory; Fourth, The impact of demographic characteristics such as age and gender, male and female consumers have no significant difference in personal nostalgia memory and history nostalgia memory, however, male and female consumers are significant differences in purchase intention, female consumers have greater willingness to buy nostalgia product. Consumers of different ages have significantly difference in nostalgia psychology and purchase intention. In general, the older are the respondent, the stronger are personal nostalgia memory and history nostalgia memories.The relevant conclusions of this study have implications on developing nostalgia products and designing nostalgic brand, making market segmentation based-on nostalgia, adopting nostalgic appeal strategic, information designing of nostalgic products’media communication and interpersonal communication,and so on. |
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