Enlightening the Present with the Past – Consumer’s Yearning for a Past Ethos: The Meaning Construction of Vintage Objects

Abstract

Past themed market resources through nostalgia marketing are recognised to be charged with a romantic, emotional, imaginary and mythical relationship to the mundane everyday life. Explaining marketers targeting of consumers who have not lived during the time which the objects ordinate from or allude to and their consumption of past themed market resources with nostalgia may seem counterintuitive since they have not lived in the time which the objects ordinate from. This study investigates consumer’s meaning creation process of past themed market resources and identifies how consumers construct meanings in vintage objects through an imaginative and interpretative process. The process this study analyses more in detail is constructed by different interpretation practices of the past, where consumers interpret the past through different interactions with narratives of the time, blurring them together by imagination and then connecting the object to their romanticised past. Turning objects to symbolical entities charged with values and atmospheres from the past enable them to enact these in the present and by that loading experiences in the present with meaning and nostalgia.