Feeling Triggered Yet? Nostalgic Triggers in Marketing

What leads people to reach out to someone that they do not talk to often? Getting back in touch with people helps make us happier, but research suggests that people reach out less than optimal (Rohrer et al., 2018). Socializing has been proven to help improve one’s overall mental health, happiness, and mood (Aknin, 2024). In two studies, we look at what features in a person’s consumption-based environment may trigger them to reach out to their loved ones. This ties back to marketing, specifically for social media companies, through people using their platforms to reach out to family/friends, which will encourage users use social media platforms more and in more enjoyable ways. Social media platforms could improve and structure their services to be more about reaching out to old friends and less about the toxic cultures that we know today. In Study 1, (N=108) we tested whether people are triggered by something nostalgic to reach out or if they would do it spontaneously. This resulted with our hypothesis holding true, people are more often triggered than not. In Study 2, (N=209) we tested whether seeing images of consumption-based products and media from childhood and teenage years of two different age groups made people more likely to reach out. We found that while seeing products and media from childhood and teen years makes people feel happier nostalgic, but it does not necessarily encourage reaching out. Reaching out. It’s something that we all should do. It helps us reconnect with old friends and generally makes us feel happy when we do so. However frequently people do not reach out despite having the technology to do so at our fingertips. In this paper, we explore if people reach out spontaneously or if something provokes people to reach out (a trigger). This paper makes two main contributions: people feel triggered to reach out and that consumption-based products from the past trigger nostalgia. These contributions help us learn that people often feel the need for something to make them reach out to old friends, rather than just doing it on their own. This also helps us learn that nostalgia is represented by old memories that typically make us feel happy and positive. People do not feel nostalgic for the bad times of their lives.