 Going against the Tide: How Self-Construal Moderates Receptivity towards Popular Brand ActivismGeetanjali Saluja and Eugene Y. Chan Journal of Business Research, 2025, vol. 190, issue C Abstract: Many brands in today’s marketplace choose to take a public stance on socio-political issues. For example, some brands have indicated support for or opposition to Israel, while there are brands that support or oppose same sex-marriages. This research examines the type of consumers to whom a brand supporting or opposing socio-political issues might appeal. Specifically, we focus on consumers with independent versus interdependent self-construal. Four studies offer evidence that independents consider brand activism that opposes prevailing public opinions regarding socio-political issues as “bold” and “courageous”. By contrast, independents and interdependents equally favor brands that support such majority public opinion. We discuss the limitations of these results and offer guidance for future researchers and brand managers. We situate our findings within the American political discourse and marketplace, discuss the relevance of our results for brands that are interested in activism, and acknowledge limitations to our work. Keywords: Brand activism; Socio-political issues; Self-construal (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:190:y:2025:i:c:s0148296325000517 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115228 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.