Consumer hate and boycott communications of socially irresponsible fashion brands: Applying complexity theory in psychology and marketing research

Abstract

Applying complexity theory tenets, this cross‐cultural study proposes and empirically examines generalizable, asymmetric, case outcome models of consumers who respond extremely negatively to luxury and mass fashion brands that they judge to be acting socially irresponsibly—and separately, consumers who do not engage in such responses—among separate national samples of consumers in France, the UK, and USA. This study includes constructing a theory of discrete simple and complex antecedent algorithms (i.e., screens) of who perceives specific brands acting socially irresponsible, who exudes brand hate (BH), and which brand haters call versus do not call for brand boycotts. The study's findings support the following conclusions. Most consumers expressing BH advocate call for boycotting the brand (supported cross‐culturally in the study here). Among consumers who also view the brand to be very unlike themselves, most consumers recognizing a brand to be acting socially irresponsibly hate the brand. Separate tests of propositions for the models' predictive validities across three national samples of consumers support the models' generalizability. The study adds to workable approaches in psychology and marketing for complementing (or replacing) theories framed in terms of symmetric, variable, directional relationships and examined using null hypotheses significance tests.