Negative Consumer Research Articles

Branding in the age of social media firestorms: how to create brand value by fighting back online

ABSTRACTLeading research on social media firestorms typically advises managers to quickly quell the backlash by appeasing brand critics. Drawing on crisis communications and branding research, we offer a radically different perspective and argue that brands can benefit from fighting back online. Through a netnography of a moral-based firestorm, we contribute to the marketing and crisis communications literatures by identifying the escalation strategy as a way to build brand value; explaining how brands can activate supporters; and providing guidance on how to assess these morally steeped events. We advance branding research by identifying how managers can provoke consumer-generated brand stories; and uncovering the hidden benefits of negative consumer voices. Finally, we outline a new perspective on how brands are dialogically constructed through a process we call ‘flyting’.

Dark Side of Consumer Behavior: Brand Hate and Anti-Brand Actions

Negative consumer emotion towards brand like brand hate is a common phenomenon nowadays which causes anti-brand actions. This study aims to find out the influence of unfavorable brand image and negative past experiences on consumer brand hate and its impact on negative word of mouth and exit. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from the 157 respondents who were the users of different mobile brands. The Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze the data. The findings of the study suggest that negative brand image has significant influence on consumer brand hate which has positive influence consumers to take anti-brand actions like negative word of mouth and exit. The study should have included other constructs that causes consumer brand hate with large sample size. The study provides guidelines for marketers as they can understand how brand hate is impacted and its consequences.

Airline schedule padding and consumer choice behavior

Disclosure programs are quality assurance instruments when consumers are imperfectly informed about product quality. This study examines the On-Time Disclosure Rule for airline on-time performance which ranks airlines based on how well their flights arrive/depart on time. The program creates incentives for airlines to pad their flight schedules and artificially improve their reported on-time performance. Using a discrete choice demand model for air travel, we investigate how schedule padding affects consumer preferences. We find that schedule padding is associated with negative consumer welfare effects, reinforcing the notion of an unanticipated gaming behavior by firms that ends up harming consumer welfare.

The direct and indirect effects of anger and its cognitive appraisals in public relations incidents

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the predictive power of anger and its associated appraisal dimensions of consumer responses to two different public relations incidents. Design/methodology/approach A natural quasi-experiment was conducted within a month after the public relations incidents. Participants randomly viewed one of the two videos relating to the incidents. Path analysis was used to examine the direct and indirect effects of anger, acceptability appraisal, motivational incongruence appraisal, relevance appraisal and other accountability appraisal on consumers’ intention to harm the brand and future purchase intention. Findings Appraisals of acceptability, motivational incongruence and relevance, but not other accountability, have both direct and indirect effects on anger and its motivational tendency. Acceptability appraisal directly increases consumers’ intention to harm, whereas relevance appraisal directly increases their intention to harm and reduces future purchase intention. The degree to which these appraisal structure and anger occur account for the level of negative consumer responses toward the two public relations incidents. Practical implications The current findings empirically replicate the diverse consumer responses toward two public relations incidents and use anger and its appraisal structure to account for the negative responses. This provides researchers and practitioners a framework to explain and manage consumers’ reaction toward different public relations incidents. Originality/value The current findings not only support the motivational role of anger and its accompanying appraisals in public relations incidents, but also demonstrate their predictive power in the given contexts.

Antimicrobial-resistant bacterial infections from foods of animal origin: understanding and effectively communicating to consumers.

Consumers are increasingly interested in the attributes of the food they consume. This includes what is in the food and how it was raised; and at least some consumers are willing to pay a premium for products with specific attributes. However, the current plethora of labels on the market does not adequately address this issue; rather than providing actionable information, most labels add to the consumer confusion. In addition, there is a tendency toward “absence labels” that can contribute to a negative consumer perception of conventional products that may or may not include the attribute in question. Communication with consumers about the complex and highly technical issue of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is challenging, and experiences from communication efforts about food safety–related issues demonstrate exactly how challenging this is to communicate clearly. General lessons learned from the science of risk communication can help guide efforts to communicate about the challenging issue of AMR. There are efforts underway to chart out a new approach. A new labeled animal production certification program is under development to provide choice for consumers, while reducing consumer confusion, which mandates antibiotic stewardship practices.

How confusion impacts product labeling perceptions

PurposeConsumer confusion is an often discussed, but seldom investigated, construct central to marketing. This study aims to conceptualize consumer confusion as an intellectual emotion with cognitive and emotional components, and examine it in the context of qualified health claims and conflicting marketplace information.Design/methodology/approachA between-subjects experimental design is used to test the hypotheses.FindingsStructural equation modeling suggests that weak science discussions and conflicting information on dietary supplements evoke consumer confusion. Confusion, in turn, impacts scientific certainty perceptions, product quality and firm credibility. Incorporating confusion measures in theoretical models significantly increases the amount of variance explained in consumer perceptions. Implications are offered for businesses, consumer behaviorists and public policymakers.Originality/valueIt is hard to think about many of marketing’s focal issues (e.g. trademark theory, disclosures and warnings, advertising deception, search and shopping behavior) without using the term confusion. While confusion is central to discussions of these domains, it has evaded focused attention and study. Indeed, no previous research in marketing has directly addressed the experience of consumer confusion per se. The current research fills a gap in the marketing literature by explicitly defining the construct of confusion and offering a measurement approach that is easily adapted to many business/consumer interactions. Furthermore, the authors demonstrate the role of confusion in the context of qualified health claims by showing how conflicting information between health claims, qualifiers and external information can create confusion, and in turn, lead to negative consumer perceptions.

Brand hypocrisy from a consumer perspective: scale development and validation

PurposeThere is increasing interest in understanding negative consumer reactions to brands and the nature of negative brand perceptions. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize the construct of brand hypocrisy from a consumer perspective and develop a scale to measure it.Design/methodology/approachA multiphase scale development process involving 559 consumers was conducted. Study 1 pertains to item generation and reduction phases. Study 2 reports on scale purification and validation through confirmatory factor analyses and model comparisons. Study 3 focuses on discriminant and predictive validity, while Study 4 further investigates predictive validity using real brands with differences in brand hypocrisy.FindingsA 12-item scale measuring four dimensions of brand hypocrisy is developed: image hypocrisy (brand failing to put words into action), mission hypocrisy (brand exerting an unacknowledged negative impact on society or consumer well-being), message hypocrisy (brand conveying unrealistic or unattainable images) and social hypocrisy (brand supporting social responsibility initiatives for strategic purposes only). Results indicate that brand hypocrisy is distinguishable from similar constructs in the literature and that it is a significant predictor of negative word-of-mouth and brand distance.Practical implicationsThis conceptualization provides managers with a detailed understanding of what constitutes a hypocritical brand in the eyes of consumers as well as insights about how to prevent consumer perceptions of brand hypocrisy.Originality/valueFindings enrich the understanding of negative consumer inferences related to brands and provide a conceptualization of an understudied but increasingly relevant form of brand judgment.

Consumer Responses to High Service Attentiveness: A Cross-Cultural Examination

Although the literature generally indicates that service attentiveness can increase consumer satisfaction, providing extra care and attention in service encounters may backfire and lead to negative consumer outcomes. In addition, because of cross-cultural differences, the effects of high service attentiveness may vary across international markets. The authors conduct a qualitative study, a field experiment, and two laboratory experiments in three countries (Canada, the United States, and China) across various service contexts (hairdressing, telecommunications, and computer repair) to examine cross-cultural consumer responses toward high service attentiveness. Consumers’ negative responses toward high service attentiveness are mediated by their suspicion of ulterior motive, which varies according to their self-construal. Specifically, consumers with an interdependent self-construal (either chronic or primed) tend to have greater suspicion of and negative responses toward high service attentiveness. Furthermore, the effect of interdependent self-construal fostering greater suspicion is attributed to a sharper in-group (vs. out-group) distinction, which is mitigated when the service employee is perceived to be an in-group member. The authors conclude by discussing the theoretical and managerial implications and suggesting future research directions.

The effect of activity identity fusion on negative consumer behavior

AbstractNegative consumer behavior is an important research topic as it explores consumer behaviors that threaten a brand's image and financial stability. However, prior research offers conflicting findings on whether a strong consumer‐brand relationship hurts or protects a brand after a market disruption or a brand transgression. To provide clarity on this issue, this work argues that disrupting the consumer‐activity relationship motivates consumers to reaffirm and protect their identity, thereby leading to negative consumer behavior. The data reveal that, after a brand‐initiated market disruption, consumers with high activity identity fusion are more likely to spread negative word‐of‐mouth, boycott the brand, and avoid repurchasing the brand in the future. Moreover, the data suggest that high brand identity fusion protects the brand during market disruptions; therefore, prior conflicting results may be due to the fact that the consumer‐activity relationship was not accounted for. Theoretically, this work establishes that consumers' relationship with their consumption activities has significant impacts on consumer behavior. Brand managers and marketers are urged to develop strategies that focus on strengthening the consumer‐brand relationship and not the consumer‐activity relationship.

Firm authenticity: the construct, research propositions, and managerial implications

Firm authenticity is conceptualized as a dual-component hierarchical model, suggesting that authenticity is manifested at different organizational (employee, leadership, and strategic management) levels, as well as in the organization’s marketplace presence (products, brands, and corporate identity). Firm authenticity is distinguished from trustworthiness, corporate social responsibility, and market orientation, providing insight into the strategy’s theoretical boundaries. Drawing on signaling and stakeholder theories, a mediated conceptual model capturing a series of research propositions is advanced. Signaling theory suggests that signaling authenticity can be effective, and stakeholder theory proposes that firm authenticity appeals to all stakeholders, resulting in increased shareholder value and potentially shielding the firm from negative consumer reactions, whereas signaling theory proposes that it positively influences consumer related outcome variables (loyalty and purchase intentions). Managers are encouraged to integrate authenticity into their organizations, while research extensions that operationalize the construct and test its nomological validity, using latent variable modeling, secondary data analysis, or a combination thereof are recommended.

Transition towards a sustainable heating and cooling sector - case study of southeast European countries

Many traditional heating systems which are based on fossils face challenges such as lack of investment or unfavorable price regulations, low technical performance, environmental impacts and negative consumer perceptions. The CoolHeating project which is, funded by the EU?s Horizon 2020 programme and presented in this paper promotes the implementation of small modular renewable heating and cooling grids for communities in South-Eastern Europe. Core project activities bincluded measures to stimulate the interest of communities and citizens to set-up renewable district heating systems in five target communities in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and North Macedonia up to the investment stage. Single criteria and multi-criteria assessment approaches, considering economic, environmental and social indicators of the targeted projects, have been applied in this work in order to investigate opportunities for the sustainable transition of the heating and cooling sectors of the target communities of Southeast Europe. Both approaches confirm the feasibilities of the transition from traditional to renewable energy-based heating systems for each target community in the countries of South-Eastern Europe. After simulation and replication of the results, the sustainability analysis indicatively shows that the transitions from traditional fossil-based, poor-maintained, and difficult-to-manage heating systems towards renewable district heating and cooling systems in Southeast Europe are sustainable solutions. Having in mind the modularity of such systems, those solutions can be replicated in other Southeast European cities and other countries.

The role of sports sponsorship in negative new stories about a brand: Approach the halo effect

This study examines whether a company’s sports sponsorship plays a buffering role that mitigates negative consumer perceptions of the company or its brands. The study highlights the necessity of ex...

The most optimal way to deal with negative consumer review

PurposeAfter a negative consumer review (NCR) has been posted on an online shopping site such as Amazon.com, the immediate concern of a brand holder should be to focus on the steps the brand should take to rebuild the unhappy consumers’ trust. The purpose of this paper is to employ the signalling theory to analyse whether a brand response, a customer response or a response that combines both when responding to a NCR leads to better product purchase intentions at the customer end.Design/methodology/approachIn a laboratory study comprising 351 respondents, six different response scenarios are tested, both for a well-known and an unknown brand. The experiment employs a 6 (response scenario: single brand response, single customer response, brand response and one customer response or vice versa, brand response and three customer responses or vice versa)×2 (customer-based brand equity: strong/weak) between-subject design.FindingsThe findings show that after a NCR, the subjects perceive a customer response as more trustworthy than a response from an unknown brand. However, customer-based brand equity changes the whole story. If a strong brand responds, the purchase intentions of the subjects are similar to those generated by a single customer’s response. In addition, after considering multiple responses, it can be seen that a response combining a brand and a customer response has a higher effect than from a single response. Furthermore, the authors demonstrate that perceptions are more favourable if several customer responses are sent in case of an unknown brand.Originality/valueThe originality of this paper lies in the fact that it tries to explore how the consumers perceive multiple responses from different sources after a NCR has been posted. The results highlight that a response that combines a brand and a customer response has a significantly higher effect than what is achieved from a single response. It must also be noted that customer-based brand equity plays a key role.

User-Generated Tweets about Global Green Brands: A Sentiment Analysis Approach

Purpose – Microblogging platforms are generating an infinite volume of content on various topics. Therefore, traditional marketing methods can hardly be employed for its effective research, but sentiment analysis has recently emerged to cope with this challenge. While considerable academic effort has been devoted to investigating consumer behavior towards green brands, studies explicitly addressing consumer sentiments regarding such brands are still rare. Hence, we apply the sentiment analysis approach to investigate consumer sentiments towards 26 global green brands. Design/Methodology/Approach – First, we collected a random set of user-generated tweets in English that were posted in a six-month period and included at least one of the selected global green brands. When classifying the posts, we extracted polarity information from a passage, resulting in values ranging from positive to negative. Findings and implications – Based on a relative frequency word count, we found that consumers often express their sentiments about products, their characteristics and personal consequences of using them. Next, we analyzed average positive and negative consumer sentiments. As previously demonstrated, most tweets are either not strongly affective or they are ambiguous. Based on such empirical insights, companies can better manage their brand perception on Twitter and other social media, as an integral part of their proactive marketing strategy. Limitation – The study also has some limitations. It has a limited ability to reveal consumer motivations. The lexicon-based method we used may sometimes fail to recognize subtle forms of linguistic expression. Originality – This research builds onto prior studies on green brands by applying sentiment analysis. It adds to the existing knowledge by investigating consumer sentiments towards 26 global green brands.

Consumer Attitudes towards Industrial CO2 Capture and Storage Products and Technologies

This paper discusses and elicits consumer attitudes towards industrial carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and storage (ICCS) products and technologies. It presents a comprehensive review of the relevant research literature on consumer attitudes towards ICCS represented by the willingness-to-pay (WTP) and willingness-to-accept (WTA) negative externalities and outcomes of the carbon capture and storage (the so-called “not-in-my-backyard” (NIMBY) approach). In addition, it employs a concise empirical model that uses the data from the online questionnaire survey conducted in 7 European Union (EU) countries with and without ICSS sites. Our results demonstrate that having at least one ICCS site significantly reduces the WTA for the ICCS products and technologies. It is shown that further increase of ICCS sites, including those in the neighboring regions and countries, leads to the increase of negative consumer attitudes to the ICCS technologies and renewable energy policies. It becomes apparent that the majority of consumers are willing to support industrial CO2 capture and storage only if it happens far away from their dwellings. The outcomes of this paper might be informative for the EU local industries and policy-makers who are planning the location of ICCS sites and optimizing the public support for their endeavors. Moreover, they might be relevant for the stakeholders dealing with the threat of climate change and the necessity for the decarbonization of the economy.

Brand Crisis-Sentiment Analysis of User-Generated Comments About @Maggi on Facebook

This paper examines the brand crisis faced by Maggi, Nestle’s brand of instant noodles in India, and analyzes the extent to which a health-related crisis can impact consumer response on social media (Facebook) for a strong and trusted brand. The sentiment analysis of the consumer comments and posts was done using Lexalytics and brand associations were ascertained through generation of word clouds. It was found that the impact of negative consumer sentiments on net polarity score during the crisis was mitigated to a significant extent by high positive valence of counterarguments put forth by committed consumers. Today, social media has emerged as a major platform for brand crisis and reputation management and this paper contributes to literature, by proposing a conceptual model based on consumer sentiment in response to corporate communication by the affected brand and its key competitor on social media, both during and post the brand crisis. The findings and implications of this research can help brand managers formulate their social media strategy for effective crisis management.

Send 'Her' My Love: A Circumplex Model for Understanding Relationship Journeys in Consumer-Smart Object Assemblages

Consumers’ interactions with smart objects have a relational nature and extensive research has supported the “relationship metaphor” as a fruitful way to understand consumer responses to consumption objects. But, smart objects pose unique challenges for considering the emergence of consumer-object relationships, because their degrees of agency, autonomy and authority lend them their own unique capacities for interaction. We present a new framework for consumer-object relationships based on the circumplex model of interpersonal complementarity, and situated in assemblage theory and object oriented ontology. Consumer-object relationship styles are defined in terms of two foundational dimensions of behavior, agency and communion, based on the expressive roles played by consumer and object. The overlay of assemblage theory provides a conceptually rich understanding of the space of master-servant, partner and unstable relationship styles, along with their concomitant positive (enabling) versus negative (constraining) consumer experiences. The model’s underlying geometry supports extensive empirical work, and provides a powerful managerial framework for measuring and tracking consumer-object relationships and the journeys they take over time.

Superstition, Ethics, and Transformative Consumer Research

The growing popularity of research on the role of superstition and other extraordinary beliefs in the marketplace presents new challenges and opportunities for the enhancement of consumer well-being. Drawing upon the three major ethical traditions of utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics, I offer some preliminary proposals for how this area of investigation might adopt the principles of transformative consumer research (TCR) and promote the goals of consumer welfare and sustainability. The common types of studies in this area are categorized, as well as the degree of risk these studies pose for possible negative consumer and societal outcomes. Finally, I discuss some issues to be considered and offer some suggestions for applying the goals of TCR to research on superstition and extraordinary beliefs.

Anti‐Competitive Market Distortions: A Typology

AbstractMarket distortions are seen in almost every country. These distortions are created by policymakers. Sometimes they are a response to genuine market failures. More often, though, these distortions are meant to tilt the field of competition and they have strong anti‐competitive effects. In this article we create a typology of such anti‐competitive market distortions (ACMDs) and show how each of them has strongly negative consumer welfare implications.

The psychological effects of fast food consumption on body image emotions

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the arousal of negative consumer emotions as a consequence of fast food consumption among individuals with restrained food consumption. Furthermore, a moderating effect of socio-cultural pressure to buffer these relationships is positioned for the first time.Design/methodology/approachThe field study is completed with data collected through an online survey among 353 customers by employing a random sampling technique. The collected data are analyzed through confirmatory factor analysis procedures.FindingsThe hypotheses related to the effects of fast food consumption on body image guilt and shame, body image guilt on planning diet and shame, moderator role of socio-cultural, in terms of shame, are accepted.Research limitations/implicationsA key limitation is data collected from individuals with restrained food consumption in Turkey which limits the generalizability of results to other countries and contexts.Practical implicationsThe results call for paying attention to socio-cultural pressures that enhance shame.Originality/valueThe primary contribution of this paper lies in the fact that fast food consumption is scantly related to the arousal of negative consumer emotions. Furthermore, moderating effects of social pressures and Turkish context are also unique to this study.