Retro‐marketing: yesterday’s tomorrows, today!

The past may be a foreign country, according to L.P. Hartley, but marketers seem to have secured resident alien status. Retro products, services, advertisements and pricing policies are everywhere apparent, as are heritage centres, mega‐brand museums, festival shopping malls and retrorestaurants like Planet Hollywood, Hard Rock Café or Dick Clarke’s American Bandstand Grill. This paper examines the retro‐marketing phenomenon, notes its characteristics, causes and consequences, and makes some sure‐to‐prove‐erroneous predictions about the future of the past.