Consumer storytelling as an element of word-of-mouth communication of nostalgic brands: evidence from Poland

  • Received May 3, 2020;
    Accepted August 10, 2020;
    Published August 11, 2020
  • Author(s)
  • DOI
    http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/im.16(3).2020.07
  • Article Info
    Volume 16 2020, Issue #3, pp. 74-84
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Nowadays, brand storytelling is an important element of successful brand management on the business-to-consumer market. Based on brand storytelling, consumers create their own brand stories. Therefore, consumer storytelling becomes an essential component of word-of-mouth communication. The objective of the paper is to evaluate the possibility of using consumer storytelling as an element of word-of-mouth communication of nostalgic brands. The results of the empirical studies concerning 24 international and Polish, generational and transgenerational nostalgic brands, conducted among 1,000 Polish consumers, are presented. The research is based on a personal interview technique, an online survey technique and a focus group interview. Research results confirm that nostalgic brands – that reflect personal history – generate stories more often than their non-nostalgic counterparts. Consumer storytelling is more common among older respondents. Consumers create stories about nostalgic brands and are happy to share them. Given the strength of consumer storytelling, it is worth encouraging consumers to share stories about the brand that can be an important element of word-of-mouth communication.

Acknowledgement
The research project was funded by the National Science Centre (project Opus 9, No. 2015/17/B/HS4/00945, “Nostalgia in brand management”) for the period 2016–2020.

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    • Figure 1. Consumer storytelling for generational nostalgic and non-nostalgic brands in specific age groups
    • Table 1. Sample characteristic – quantitative study
    • Table 2. Operationalization of consumer storytelling
    • Table 3. Sample characteristic – qualitative study
    • Table 4. Consumer storytelling in case of transgenerational brands
    • Table 5. Consumer storytelling in case of generational brands
    • Table 6. Consumer storytelling evaluation for nostalgic and non-nostalgic brands
    • Table 7. The results of the Wilcoxon signed-rank test for nostalgic and non-nostalgic brands
    • Conceptualization
      Magdalena Grębosz-Krawczyk
    • Data curation
      Magdalena Grębosz-Krawczyk
    • Formal Analysis
      Magdalena Grębosz-Krawczyk
    • Funding acquisition
      Magdalena Grębosz-Krawczyk
    • Investigation
      Magdalena Grębosz-Krawczyk
    • Methodology
      Magdalena Grębosz-Krawczyk
    • Project administration
      Magdalena Grębosz-Krawczyk
    • Resources
      Magdalena Grębosz-Krawczyk
    • Software
      Magdalena Grębosz-Krawczyk
    • Supervision
      Magdalena Grębosz-Krawczyk
    • Validation
      Magdalena Grębosz-Krawczyk
    • Visualization
      Magdalena Grębosz-Krawczyk
    • Writing – original draft
      Magdalena Grębosz-Krawczyk
    • Writing – review & editing
      Magdalena Grębosz-Krawczyk