UN 405 - IJRM. Regressive Nostalgia.

Up Next with Gabriella Mirabelli · Apr 2, 2026 · 26m

Finola Kerrigan, professor of marketing at Birmingham Business School, spent ten years with colleagues studying James Bond fan communities online. Their findings, published in the International Journal of Research in Marketing, upend a basic assumption in brand management: that loyal, vocal fans are always an asset. The research identifies a pattern called regressive nostalgia, where a subset of fans resists a brand's cultural evolution and pulls it toward an idealized past. The conversation covers how brand stewards can distinguish between constructive loyalty and regressive attachment, why…