Brand anthropomorphism, love and defense: does attitude towards social distancing matter?

Faizan Ali, Seden Dogan, Muslim Amin, Kashif Hussain and Kisang Ryu

The Service Industries Journal, 2021, vol. 41, issue 1-2, 58-83

Abstract: Several hospitality brands changed their logos to reinforce the importance of social distancing in reducing the risk of virus infection. Since social distancing is a polarizing topic, this research intends to understand consumers’ attitudes towards social distancing and their response to branding change by hospitality brands. Study 1 creates and validates a multiple-item scale to examine consumers’ attitudes towards social distancing, which is then adopted for two subsequent studies. Study 2 tests consumers’ awareness and perceived brand anthropomorphism during a sensitive situation like a global pandemic and the impact of perceived brand anthropomorphism on brand love and brand defense. Study 3 tests the proposed model in study 2 across two customer segments, i.e. those in favor of social distancing and its effectiveness and those against it. Results indicate that brand anthropomorphism and brand love have a significantly positive impact on brand defense. Additionally, these relationships differ for consumers who favor or oppose social distancing. Our research contributes to the hospitality branding literature by studying relatively understudied branding constructs in an unprecedented context and offers insights for hospitality branding and marketing managers.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02642069.2020.1867542 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:servic:v:41:y:2021:i:1-2:p:58-83

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/FSIJ20

DOI: 10.1080/02642069.2020.1867542

Access Statistics for this article

The Service Industries Journal is currently edited by Eileen Bridges, Professor Domingo Ribeiro, Ronald Goldsmith, Barry Howcroft and Youjae Yi

More articles in The Service Industries Journal from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().