Brand negativity: a relational perspective on anti-brand community participation

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to focus on the phenomena of negative brand relationships and emotions to evidence how such relationships transpose into the willingness to participate in collective actions in anti-brand communities. Design/methodology/approach An online survey was carried out, targeting Facebook anti-brand communities, dedicated to sharing negativity toward technology products. A total of 300 members of these communities participated in the study. Findings The study shows that the two dimensions of negative brand relationship (negative emotional connection and two-way communication) lead to community participation in anti-brand communities, through the mediating role of social approval and oppositional loyalty. Anti-brand community growth is supported by members’ intentions to recommend the group and is the result of their participation. Research limitations/implications The study’s focus on technology brands calls for further research on other brand types and categories and the inclusion of other independent variables should be considered to extend understanding of collective negativity in anti-brand communities. Practical implications The paper provides insight to brand managers on the ways to manage negativity around their brand online and understand the role that brand communities play in this process. Originality/value The paper proposes the first integrative view of brand negativity, encompassing emotions and behaviors of consumers as individuals and as members of a collective, which allows the understanding of the dynamics of anti-branding and highlights the mechanisms that facilitate anti-brand community expansion.

I can’t stop hating you: an anti-brand-community perspective on apple brand hate

“…A review of the emerging literature also shows that anti-brand activism targets mainly the (otherwise) most loved and global brands (Kucuk, 2008(Kucuk, , 2010Özböluk and Dursun, 2017;Osuna Ramírez et al, 2019) by demonstrating how consumers consciously reject brands primarily due to impediments to their own social identity creation (Wolter et al, 2016;Khalifa and Shukla, 2017), feelings of usease at the idea of buying a specific brand and lack of emotional complementarity (Dessart et al, 2020). These findings shed light on and enhance our understanding of why antibranders criminalize, demonize and dehumanize the hated brands (Kucuk, 2018), as well as on exploring effective ways to manage real-time and easily voiced brand negativity (Veloutsou and Guzmán, 2017;Dessart et al, 2020). This assumption led us to question why brands generate feelings of hatred, especially in an era characterized by a constant search for authenticity, and to consider the emotional and behavioral outcomes of their hatred towards the brand.…”

Fresh perspectives on brand management

“…The most important megatrends are digitalisation, changing values and new business models, which results in completely new questions and challenges for brand management. 'Hot' topics include the loss of brand control by external stakeholders (keywords: Firestorms in social media, brand hate, brand co-creation; e.g., Dessart et al, 2020;Herhausen et al, 2019;Ind et al, 2017;Ind & Schmidt, 2019;Kristal et al, 2018Kristal et al, , 2020Zarantonello et al, 2016), more complex customer journeys through off-and online brand touchpoints (keywords: ZMOT, customer journey, brand and customer experience; e.g., Lecinski, 2011;Lemon & Verhoef, 2016), new digital brand contact points (keywords: voice assistants and robots; e.g., Kuehnl et al, 2019;McLeay et al, 2020;West et al, 2018), the legitimacy crisis of purely profit-oriented business models and brands (keywords: Fridays for Future, Black Lives Matter, brand purpose, political brands; e.g., Hsu, 2017;Matos et al, 2017), new types of collaboration (keywords: art-brand-collaborations, influencer; e.g., Baumgarth, 2018;Baumgarth & Wieker, 2020;Ki et al, 2020;Michel & Willing, 2020;Nascimento et al, 2020) and building brands for new companies and new business models (keywords: start-up or entrepreneurial branding, vegan and meat alternatives, platform brands, direct-to-consumer brands; e.g., Eggers et al, 2016;Haslehurst et al, 2017;Kühlwein, 2019;Van Loo et al 2020). These and many other new topics lead to new and exciting questions for brand science.…”

Models for brand relationships

“…Individual brand relationships research started over 20 years ago by looking at various degrees of positive relationship concepts such as brand satisfaction (Keiningham et al, 2014), brand attachment (Japutra et al, 2014), positive word of mouth (Keller, 2007), brand love (Batra et al, 2012), brand evangelism (Becerra and Badrinarayanan, 2013) and brand loyalty (Amine, 1998). Collective brand relationships research examines supportive brand communities and the positive brand outcomes they generate (Veloutsou and Ruiz-Mafé, 2020), non-supportive anti-brand communities and their possible negative brand outcomes, and considers that collective and individual brand relationships are concurrent (Coelho et al, 2019;Dessart et al, 2020). Although the focus of brand-centric research is still mostly on positive relationships and outcomes (Albert and Thomson, 2018;Veloutsou and Ruiz-Mafé, 2020), recent research also explores concepts related to negative brand relationships or feelings such as complaining (Huefner et al, 2002), brand avoidance (Lee et al, 2009;Knittel et al, 2016), brand retaliation (Thomson et al, 2012) or brand hate (Kucuk, 2010;Zarantonello et al, 2016Zarantonello et al, , 2018Hegner et al, 2017;Fetscherin, 2019).…”

“…Although the focus of brand-centric research is still mostly on positive relationships and outcomes (Albert and Thomson, 2018;Veloutsou and Ruiz-Mafé, 2020), recent research also explores concepts related to negative brand relationships or feelings such as complaining (Huefner et al, 2002), brand avoidance (Lee et al, 2009;Knittel et al, 2016), brand retaliation (Thomson et al, 2012) or brand hate (Kucuk, 2010;Zarantonello et al, 2016Zarantonello et al, , 2018Hegner et al, 2017;Fetscherin, 2019). Recent research also explores the drivers and outcomes of participating in anti-brand communities (Popp et al, 2016;Dessart et al, 2020;Rodrigues et al, 2020), how the nature of brand-centric relationships may change over time (Jain and Sharma, 2019;Sakulsinlapakorn and Zhang, 2019;Kennedy and Guzm an, 2020) and how different consumers develop relationships of different strength and valence with a same brand (Osuna-Ramírez et al, 2019). Studying both negative and positive brand-centric relationships is crucial to understand the wide range of relationships consumers have with and around brands and the dynamics of these relationships.…”