Love or hate, depends on who's saying it: How legitimacy of brand rejection alters brand preferences

Miao Hu, Pingping Qiu, Fang Wan and Tyler Stillman

Journal of Business Research, 2018, vol. 90, issue C, 164-170

Abstract: Brand rejection, defined as messages or actions of rejection originating from brands or their representatives and targeted towards consumers, is an increasingly documented phenomenon among companies and brands. The current research examines the perceived legitimacy of brand rejection as a novel and critical moderator for the outcomes of brand rejection. We theorize and show that when brand rejection is deemed to be legitimate, consumers who are rejected show increased preferences towards the focal brand compared to those who did not experience rejection, replicating past research. However, when brand rejection is deemed to be illegitimate, rejected consumers show decreased preferences for the rejecting brand compared to those who did not experience rejection. We further theorize and test that the interactive effects of brand rejection and rejection legitimacy are mediated by perceived brand status. Managerial insights on how legitimacy of brand rejection impacts branding strategies are discussed.

Keywords: Brand rejection; Rejection legitimacy; Brand preference; Brand status (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296318302315
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:jbrese:v:90:y:2018:i:c:p:164-170

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.05.006

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
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().