European luxury fashion brand advertising and marketing relating to nostalgia

Abstract

This research seeks to examine how European luxury fashion brands use nostalgia in their advertising and marketing, and the benefits of using nostalgia by analyzing selected adverts from Vogue magazine. The research adopts Narrative Transportation Theory, aims to create a model which develops Van Laer, de Ruyter, Viscanti and Wentzels’ (2014) “Extended Transportation-Imagery Model”, and provides managerial implications. Qualitative content analysis of imagery was conducted to analyze 60 adverts of five luxury fashion brands between 2010–2016. This research offers a different product category to investigate for nostalgia literature: luxury fashion brands’ advertising, a different cultural context: European luxury fashion brands, and examines luxury fashion brand characteristics within the adverts’ narratives by semiotics discipline. Research identifies how nostalgia theme was used in these adverts, provides an understanding among the themes, and adverts’ analysis in terms of luxury brand characteristics, narrative, and semiotics.

Keywords

• luxury fashion advertising
• luxury brand characteristics
• nostalgia
• brand heritage
• emotional branding
• semiotics
• narrative transportation theory