No abstract

While prevailing marketing practice is to encourage ever stronger relationships between consumers and brands, such relationships are rare and many consumers are relationship-averse or content with the status quo. The authors examine how marketers can more effectively manage existing brand relationships by focusing on the psychological distance between consumers and brands in order to match close (distant) brands with concrete (abstract) language in marketing communications. Through such matching, marketers can create a beneficial mindset-congruency effect leading to more favorable evaluations and behavior, even for brands that are relatively distant to consumers. Study 1 demonstrates the basic mindset-congruency effect and Study 2 shows it is capable of affecting donation behaviors. Study 3 documents two brand-level factors (search versus experience goods, brand stereotypes) that moderate this effect in managerially relevant ways. Study 4 shows that activation of the mindset-congruency effect influences consumers to spend more, and that these behaviors are moderated by consumer category involvement. The authors conclude with marketing and theoretical implications.

While brand punishment-through either individual or collective action-has received ample attention by consumer psychologists, absent from this literature is that such punishment can take the form of unethical actions that can occur even when the consumer is not personally harmed. Across three studies, we examine consumers' propensity to act unethically towards a brand that they perceive to be harmful. We document that when consumers come to see brands as harmful-even in the absence of a direct, personal transgression-they can be motivated to seek retribution in the form of unethical intentions and behaviors. That is, consumers are more likely to lie, cheat, or steal to punish a harmful brand. Drawing on these findings, we advance implications for consumer psychologists and marketing practitioners and provide avenues for future research in the area.

No abstract