Emerging Challenges For Brand Management: Anti-consumption And Brand Avoidance

Abstract

The negative perception amongst consumers for a brand is the biggest challenge for brand managers. Understanding that there could be multiple reasons for the negative perception towards a brand is very important. Monitoring the various sources of negative perceptions as a construct facilitates brand management. Such a construct is termed as brand avoidance in marketing literature. Brand avoidance is defined as incidents in which consumers deliberately choose to reject a brand. This study discusses various sources/reasons of brand avoidance: experiential avoidance, identity avoidance and moral avoidance. Understanding of sources/reasons brings brand avoidance to the core of brand management. This study aims to discover why consumers place certain brands into their inept sets and anti-choice constellations. An in-depth understanding of brand avoidance facilitates the efforts of brand management as all possible sources of brand avoidance are regularly monitored and necessary corrective measures may be taken by the brand managers.