PENGARUH NOSTALGIA MARKETING DIGITAL DAN ETHICAL BRANDING TERHADAP EMOSIONAL GEN Z: PERAN MEDIASI DARI SENTIMEN MEREK PADA BISNIS MIKRO TIKTOK

The constantly evolving digital marketing landscape has illuminated emotional connection as vital for consumer-company rapport, specifically amongst Gen Z who yearn for authenticity, prosocial responsibility and nostalgic familiarity in brand interactions. As the video sharing app TikTok emerges as a leading venue for diminutive businesses, cutting-edge techniques like Reminiscent Marketing—resuscitating cultural aesthetics and memories of the early 2000s—and Ethical Authenticity—prioritizing transparency, equity and sustainability—have been embraced to attract this cohort. However, small empirical research analyzed how these strategies impact emotional bonding, especially through brand sentiment as a mediating mechanism. This study aims to investigate the effects of Reminiscent Marketing and Ethical Authenticity on Gen Z's emotional connection, with brand feeling acting as an intermediary variable in the context of TikTok-based micro companies. Employing quantitative methodology, the research gathered primary data through structured questionnaires from purposefully selected Indonesian Gen Z TikTok consumers and evaluated it using Structural Equation Modeling with the Partial Least Squares approach. The discoveries expose that both Reminiscent Marketing and Ethical Authenticity significantly enhance emotional connection, with brand feeling playing a pivotal mediating role in these relations. The work offers original contributions to the theoretical understanding of consumer emotional behavior in social media contexts by integrating the Stimulus-Organism-Response framework. It also provides practical insights for small business owners and marketers wanting to cultivate emotionally resonant brand strategies on digital platforms, thereby informing contemporary marketing practices and policy frameworks for tiny digital enterprises.