The wellness industry has continued to grow as a service sector, and coastal cities in Korea have actively promoted the introduction of marine healing industries as part of broader efforts to foster wellness-related industries based on their geographi...
The wellness industry has continued to grow as a service sector, and coastal cities in Korea have actively promoted the introduction of marine healing industries as part of broader efforts to foster wellness-related industries based on their geographical advantages. Despite this quantitative expansion, relatively little attention has been given to marketing approaches capable of attracting consumers. In response to this gap, the present study aims to examine whether consumers’ emotional values can effectively enhance purchase intention toward marine healing centers. Nostalgia, which has recently received increasing attention in marketing research as an emotional value, is expected to function as a potentially effective marketing approach when applied to marine healing centers. Accordingly, this study focuses on marine healing centers and explores how nostalgia and related emotional values influence consumers’ value perceptions and the formation of purchase intention. Accordingly, this study focuses on marine healing centers and investigates the role of nostalgia and related emotional values in shaping consumers’ value perceptions and purchase intention. An online survey was conducted with 400 adults aged 25 and older in Korea, and the collected data were analyzed using SPSS Hayes’ PROCESS Macro (Model 6) and AMOS. The results of the path analysis indicate that all hypothesized paths among nostalgia, the search for meaning in life, hedonic value, and purchase intention exhibit statistically significant positive relationships, with the exception of the direct path from the search for meaning in life to purchase intention. Among the examined variables, hedonic value emerged as the most influential predictor of purchase intention. Furthermore, the serial multiple mediation analysis revealed that the indirect pathway through the search for meaning in life and hedonic value exerts a statistically significant positive effect. These findings provide empirical evidence that nostalgia influences purchase intention not only directly but also indirectly through emotional values, indicating the presence of a partial mediation effect. Overall, the results suggest that for experience-oriented services such as marine healing centers, emotional value and individuals’ meaning-related perceptions may play a more critical role in shaping purchase intention than functional benefits alone. In addition, by integrating nostalgia, the search for meaning in life, and hedonic value into a single analytical framework, this study offers academic implications and highlights the importance of emotion-oriented strategies in the development of marketing approaches for the marine healing industry.