Older and more personal: Stronger links between brand‐name recall and brand‐related autobiographical memories in older consumers

Successful recall of brand names often determines consumer decisions. Yet, unaided recall fails increasingly as adult consumers get older, which is a threat to brand awareness in aging societies. Still, consumer research has not explored if personally relevant episodic memories consumers associate with a brand can support brand-name memory when consumers age. This study, therefore, explores how cognitive aging affects the links between the recall of brand names from semantic memory and the subjective quality of brand-related autobiographical memories (AMs). Experimental data from 20- to 33-year-old and 60- to 90-year-old participants suggest that consumers associate successfully recalled brand names with more significant, phenomenologically richer AMs, and that this connection between semantic and episodic memory is stronger in older adults. We discuss how research and brand communication could utilize AMs to further understand and reduce negative impacts of aging on brand awareness.