Bottled Up or Poured Out: How Product Name Emotions Affect Appeal and Authenticity in the Market for Craft Beer

Olga M. Khessina (), J. Cameron Verhaal () and Stanislav D. Dobrev ()
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Olga M. Khessina: Department of Business Administration, Gies College of Business, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois 61802
J. Cameron Verhaal: Management Department, Freeman School of Business, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana 70118
Stanislav D. Dobrev: Management Department, Lubar College of Business, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53211

Strategy Science, 2023, vol. 8, issue 4, 464-483

Abstract: Although we know that product names influence audience evaluations of producers and their offerings, mechanisms behind the effect remain undertheorized. We propose that a classic psychological stimulus-and-response process is at play. Emotional contagion suggests that emotions conveyed by product names will influence consumer evaluations. Although the process is psychological, social context shapes the strength and valence in the stimulus-and-response relationship. We predict that the antimass production ideology and oppositional identity of contemporary craft markets produce reverse emotional contagion: Positively charged product names lead to negative evaluations of products and negatively charged ones lead to positive evaluations. We also predict that product names shape audience attributions of authenticity: Positive emotionality decreases authenticity perceptions and negative emotionality elevates them. We find empirical support for most of our conjectures in regression analyses of the U.S. craft beer industry between 1996 and 2012.

Keywords: product names; emotion; emotional contagion; appeal; authenticity; oppositional markets; craft markets; product evaluation; product demography (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:orstsc:v:8:y:2023:i:4:p:464-483

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