A corner café in an older suburb of Durban was doing fine, but no better than fine. Then the owner had an idea. She brought back a few things people remembered from childhood: a jar of old-fashioned sweets by the till, a milkshake made the way the local tearoom used to make it in the 1980s, and a wall of photographs of the street as it was decades ago, borrowed from long-standing residents.
Something shifted. Customers lingered at the photos and pointed out houses they’d grown up in. They told stories to their children. They ordered the milkshake and often added a slice of cake. Several said, without being asked, that the café felt like it belonged to the neighbourhood.
Nostalgia is everywhere in marketing, from retro packaging to reissued sneakers and television reboots. Most of us assume it works because it makes people feel good. Research suggests something more specific, and more surprising: feeling nostalgic appears to loosen people’s grip on their money.
One Like insight: Nostalgia reminds people of who they’re connected to, and that changes how they feel about spending.
Nostalgia and the desire for money
In 2014, Jannine Lasaleta of Grenoble École de Management, Constantine Sedikides of the University of Southampton and Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota published six experiments in the Journal of Consumer Research. They asked a simple question: why is nostalgia so common in marketing?
Their answer was that feeling nostalgic appears to weaken people’s desire for money. In one experiment, participants who were prompted to think about the past were willing to pay more for products than those prompted to think about the future. Other experiments found that nostalgic participants gave away more money (though not more time), valued money less, and were less willing to put up with discomfort to earn it.
The researchers traced the effect to social connectedness. Nostalgic memories mostly feature the people we love and the moments we shared with them. Feeling more connected to others seemed to make money feel less important, perhaps because people felt their needs could be met with help from those around them.
These were laboratory experiments, often with modest amounts of money, and the effect sizes in real purchasing will vary. The research also doesn’t say that every retro design or “throwback” campaign will lift sales. But it offers a useful explanation of why nostalgia that reconnects people with others, a shared place, a family memory, a community, can be so powerful for a business.
Using nostalgia honestly
For small businesses, the most powerful nostalgia is usually local and genuine rather than borrowed. A few approaches tend to work well.
Draw on shared memories. Old photographs of your street or town, stories from long-standing customers, or a product made the way it used to be can connect people to a time and place they care about.
Celebrate your own history. If your business has been around for years, its story is a source of nostalgia for your regulars. Anniversaries, original recipes and photographs of the early days remind people of their own connection to you.
Bring people together. Because the research links nostalgia to social connectedness, it works best when it involves other people: inviting customers to share memories, hosting reunion-style events or creating products people enjoy with family.
Keep it real. Fake heritage, such as invented “since 1952” claims or borrowed imagery with no link to your business, risks feeling manipulative, and customers increasingly notice. Nostalgia rooted in truth is more persuasive and more respectful.
There’s an ethical point worth naming too. Because nostalgia can reduce people’s focus on money, it shouldn’t be used to push people into spending more than they can afford. Used well, it gives customers a meaningful experience they’re happy to pay for.
[Infographic placement] How nostalgia works. A simple three-step flow. Nostalgic memory (a place, a taste, a shared moment) → Feeling connected to others → Money feels less important (greater willingness to pay or give). Beneath, four small icons: Shared memories · Your own history · Bringing people together · Keep it real. Caption: Lasaleta, Sedikides and Vohs (2014), six experiments in the Journal of Consumer Research.
Finding your nostalgic thread
Every business has some connection to the past worth exploring. Ask your longest-standing customers what they remember about your business or your area, and what they miss. Look through old photos, early menus, original logos or the founder’s story. Then choose one small, genuine way to bring part of it back: a heritage product, a photo wall, a story on your packaging, an anniversary event.
Test it modestly and watch how customers respond. If people linger, share memories or bring others to see it, you’ve found something that matters to them.
A few questions can help:
- What shared memories do our customers associate with our business or our area?
- Which parts of our own history could we bring back or celebrate?
- How could we involve customers in telling that story?
- Is everything we’re evoking genuinely ours, or borrowed?
Which brings us back to the corner café and its jar of old sweets. The owner didn’t trick anyone into spending more. She gave the neighbourhood a reason to remember, and to share those memories with each other. That sense of belonging made her café more than a place to buy coffee, and customers were happy to pay for the feeling.
Sources
- Jannine D. Lasaleta, Constantine Sedikides and Kathleen D. Vohs, “Nostalgia Weakens the Desire for Money”, Journal of Consumer Research 41(3), 2014.
- University of Chicago Press Journals news release, “The nostalgia effect: Do consumers spend more when thinking about the past?”, July 2014.
