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This paper aims to investigate whether brand anthropomorphism has a direct impact on brand hate and what are the prevailing factors that play a significant role in this relationship.

This study provides insights on brand anthropomorphism phenomenon and negative consumer–brand relationships in the context of social media-based anti-brand communities. Using a quantitative analysis of the data gathered from an online survey, this study analyzes brand anthropomorphism in the three main online anti-brand communities toward Apple.

Findings indicated that brand anthropomorphism in itself does not impact on brand hate directly. Nevertheless, when it is used by consumers to express their negative feelings toward the hatred brand, the consumers’ attribution of responsibility and intentionality to Apple brand’s behavior positively affects brand hate, and ideological incompatibility is a good moderator for brand hate.

The results of this study are based on a limited number of survey respondents because anti-brand community members are very difficult to access, and thus, it was not easy to have their collaboration for this research.

This study highlights the power of social media as a tool for establishing negative consumer–brand relationships. Therefore, brand managers must recognize that consumer activists may be a serious threat to the company and deal with the consumers’ tendency to use anthropomorphism to express their hate.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the link between brand anthropomorphism and brand hate, analyzed through a quantitative analysis.

Creative entrepreneurship has contributed to economic development of regions and countries and have become models for the countries in the Western world. Jewelry designer entrepreneurs are one of the contributors toward creative economy for their role in economic prosperity. This article aims to investigate brand-building efforts of jewelry designer entrepreneurs. This study also aims to explore how jewelry designer entrepreneurs develop and communicate brand narrative, and how brand backstories confer value to jewelry.

This study used a qualitative approach. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with seven Portuguese designer jewelry.

The study identified seven themes to reflect the brand narratives of the Portuguese jewelry designer entrepreneurs: designer artists considered the importance of international recognition; designer jewelry uses the ontological metaphor to connect emotionally; designer jewelry making a jewelry piece that is fluid and organic; limited association with fashion; distinctive brand communication; fair pricing strategy; and identifying self as artistic worker. The study also shows that jewelry designer entrepreneurs adopt a distinctive brand communication tactics to connect emotionally with imagine customers.

This study proposes a general and managerial guide to boost personal brand jewelry designer entrepreneurs through brand narratives.

This study bridges an academia gap on personal branding, exploring how jewelry designer entrepreneurs develop and communicate brand narrative and brand backstories adding value to the jewelry industry.

This paper aims to provide a better understanding of negative consumer–brand relationships in social-media-based anti-brand communities from a consumer culture theory (CCT) perspective. In particular, it investigates the purpose and the meaning of the consumer participation in online anti-brand communities, also through the analysis of the ways in which they express negative feelings toward the hated brands.

This study applies a “symbolic netnographic” method to six anti-brand communities related to four global brands, namely, Apple, Nestlé, Uber and McDonald’s. Moreover, several interviews were conducted with anti-brand community administrators.

The findings show that the main reason for consumers to join anti-brand communities is a desire to participate in the construction of new meanings and values of modern consumption, translating their ideological incompatibility with certain brands into negative engagement and activism aimed at destroying the hated brand’s image and reputation. Furthermore, the findings reveal that brand anthropomorphism is a frequent means of communication also used in the context of negative consumer–brand relationships, to strengthen the battle against the hated brand in a more frontal and direct manner.

Although this research provides some initial insights into negative consumer–brand relationships in the social media anti brand communities, the paper also has some limitations. The netnographic approach should be analyzed within more and different anti-brand communities. In this investigation, the authors perceived how difficult it is to obtain feedback from communities and to secure the collaboration of their administrators. There is also a need for research on other potential factors that can play a key role in negative consumer–brand relationships in social-media anti-brand communities, such as cultural capital or the impact of cultural perceptions. Moreover, future research should focus on different types of products and brand services, such as hedonic vs. utilitarian brands, as these might generate different types of consumer behavioral responses. Finally, a further direction for future research would be to consider the set of “brand recovery strategies” that can be implemented by companies to deal with negative consumer–brand relationships, including the identification of situations in which “not acting” could be preferable.

Understanding the antecedents and types of negative consumer–brand relationships enables companies to identify “brand recovery strategies” for managing negativity in the appropriate manner. Moreover, negative feelings toward brand could even be an opportunity for improving branding management.

This research improves on previous few studies dealing with online anti-brand communities from a CCT perspective. Firstly, it provides a holistic perspective of negative consumer–brand relationships in general and specifically of brand hate, thus advancing our understanding of the sociocultural dynamics of negative consumer–brand relationships; secondly, it provides new insights into the brand anthropomorphism phenomenon emerging in the negative feelings context. Overall, this research contributes to knowledge for both academics and managers as to why, how and for what purpose consumers experience negative engagement toward certain brands in the specific context of social-media-based anti-brand communities.

This paper aims to the literature on negative consumer-brand relationships by advancing knowledge on the key triggers of brand hate of global and prominent brands. It investigates for the first time the role of brand in triggering brand hate, as well as behavioral and emotional brand hate outcomes, i.e. willingness to punish and negative brand engagement. Additionally, it explores the impact of product ownership and previous love feelings in the formation of brand hate.

The data collection was conducted on two Apple anti-brand communities after the given consent of its administrators. Data analysis was performed using structural equation modeling.

The paper suggests that brand hate is a construct with four first-order formative triggers (symbolic incongruity, ideological incompatibility, negative past experience and brand inauthenticity). It also demonstrates that brand hate is a dichotomous concept that comprises negative emotional dimensions (i.e. negative brand engagement) and behavioral dimensions (i.e. brand aversion, negative word-of-mouth and willingness to punish brands). Finally, it shows how brand hate differs among users vs non-users and passionate vs non-passionate consumers of Apple.

This paper contributes to the literature on negative consumer-brand relationships by advancing knowledge on the key triggers and outcomes of brand hate of global and prominent brands. More importantly, it demonstrates empirically that brand hate does not occur at a specific point of time and may result in transient hatred motivated by emotion-eliciting events (e.g. using a product) or as a long-term consumer-brand relationship that changed from love to hatred.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the antecedents and consequences of social media fashion influencer's (SMFI) diffusion of fashion information. This study proposes and examines following research questions: What motivates SMFI to share fashion information? In what way shared fashion information impact SMFI?

This study uses semi-structured interviews with SMFI to learn about their relationships with followers. It then conducts a survey of 510 SMFI in Portugal. The data are analyzed by structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that intrinsic motivation can develop a SMFIs' fashion leadership, while the SMFIs' perceived usability of fashion blogs does not. The authors also find a self-serving bias among SMFI.

SMFIs' fashion leadership is associated with the intrinsic motivations of sharing and helping other consumers make fashion decisions, which indicates that marketers can improve their results through using opinion SMFI to assist fashion consumers in purchasing decisions. Further studies should explore the processes adopted by fashion consumers to evaluate SMFI.

This study helps to understand the antecedents and consequences of fashion diffusion by SMFIs. In particular, the research helps the marketers to understand how the bonds between SMFIs and followers are nurtured.

The purpose of this study is to place the antecedents and consequences of brand hate in the context of negative consumer–brand relationship in the telecommunication industry. It provides a response to the existing gap in the research on brand hate in consumer behavior in service brands.

A survey-based data was modeled after theory that aims to apply concepts to the telecommunications industry. With a solid model grounded and context-adapted, a mediation analysis of the role of brand hate in negative antecedents and consequences toward brands was performed.

Brand hate was found to mediate all the negative relationships proposed, while showing to be especially significant in mediating negative word of mouth. This model appropriately fits the services' marketing brand and revealed new insights into the function of brand hate in negative relationships that are specific to service marketing consumer brands.

Branding theory may benefit from deeper insights into the negative side of consumer–brand relationships. A broader illustration of its constituents in different industries and the recovery of the management approach to these circumstances bring innovation and a richer understanding, specially to the role of brand hate in the mediation context as seen in the literature (Hegner et al., 2017; Zarantonello et al., 2016)

Managerial implications include assessing brands in analyzing and relating to different emotions and concepts from customers, allowing to prioritize and mapping the customer relationship touchpoints.

The present study presents a first insight of brand hate in the context of the service industry of telecommunications in southern Europe while testing brand hate as a mediator involving negative predictors leading to negative outcomes in consumer–brand relationships.

Extending the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), this paper aims to measure the relative importance of different barriers to sustainable fashion consumption (SFC).

Existing studies have mainly adopted a qualitative methodology for identifying barriers to uptake of SFC, this study uses six of the main identified barriers: environmental apparel knowledge, perceived value, price sensitivity, product attributes and variety, availability and scepticism into the TPB framework to test and reveal which barriers have the greater impact on the TPB cognitions and consequently on building intention towards SFC. To test this model a survey study among 669 consumers from Europe, Asian and North America was conducted, structural equation modelling is used to test the research hypotheses.

Findings confirm the role of TPB cognitions on predicting intention and show that the proposed barriers provide a satisfactory explanation of the TPB model. Furthermore, results show that product attributes and variety and environmental apparel knowledge have the greatest impact on the TPB cognitions and on building intention towards SFC. Differences were found between the impacts of the price for the three continents.

This research contributes to the emerging sustainable fashion literature by examining the impact of different barriers to SFC in an extended TPB framework. To the best of our knowledge price sensitivity, availability and scepticism have never been studied in the context of sustainable fashion. It also provides a multifactor group analysis which uncovers differences among consumers from different continents.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the antecedent (Consumer Involvement) and the consequences (Brand Connection and Brand Usage Intent [BUI]) of the three dimensions of Consumer Brand Engagement (CBE) (Cognitive Processing, Affection and Activation) in luxury brand engagement on Facebook.

Data were collected through an online questionnaire completed by fans/followers of luxury brands’ Facebook pages. The empirical study was conducted using structural equation modelling.

Consumer Involvement has a positive impact on the three dimensions of CBE (Cognitive Processing, Affection and Activation). This leads to the conclusion that Activation and Affection have an impact both on Self-Brand Connection and on BUI. Moreover, it was found that Cognitive Processing impacts only on BUI.

The results identified the factors which brand managers should focus on to increase CBE on Facebook.

This study is a pioneer, as it extends the consumer engagement model to the social media context in a hedonic and conspicuous consumption category which includes luxury brand products.

Esta investigación analiza el antecedente (compromiso del consumidor) y las consecuencias (conexión con la marca e intención de uso de marca) de las tres dimensiones del compromiso del consumidor con la marca (procesamiento cognitivo, afectivo y activo) en el compromiso con la marca de lujo en Facebook.

Los datos se obtuvieron a través de un cuestionario online de los seguidores de varias páginas de marcas de lujo en Facebook. El estudio empírico se realizó utilizando un modelo SEM.

El compromiso del consumidor tiene un impacto positivo en las tres dimensiones del compromiso del consumidor con la marca (procesamiento cognitivo, afectivo y activo). Esto lleva a concluir que los procesos activo y afectivo tienen un impacto tanto en la conexión con la marca como en su intención de uso. Además, se constató que el proceso cognitivo sólo afecta a la intención de uso de la marca.

Los resultados identificaron los factores en los que los directores de marca deberían centrarse para aumentar el compromiso del consumidor hacia la marca en Facebook.

Este estudio es pionero, dado que extiende el modelo de compromiso del consumidor al contexto de las redes sociales en una categoría de consumo hedónico y ostentoso que incluye a bienes y servicios como las marcas de lujo.

This paper aims to propose a dynamic and holistic framework that combines the brand portfolio audit with the brand architecture redesign.

Depicting from an extensive review on the frameworks of brand audit and brand architecture, a dynamic approach to brand portfolio audit and brand architecture strategy was developed, and later applied and tested in three B2B and B2C companies.

The paper suggests an eight-step framework to guide practitioners when auditing a specific brand portfolio and designing a revised brand architecture strategy. Additionally, a Brand Audit Scorecard was developed to enable and sustain brand portfolio audits, divided into three dimensions (brand equity, brand contribution and strategic options).

Further research should aim at testing the proposed framework in different types of companies and countries.

This paper contributes to the brand audit and brand architecture literature by proposing a holistic framework that is not static.

Brands have traditionally been regarded as a key asset and a source of competitive advantage in purchasing decisions, as customers are expected to prefer stronger brands to minimize risks. However, the role of brands in business markets is unclear and underresearched. The purpose of this study is to analyze the relevance of brands in a business-to-business (B2B) purchase setting and their key determinants.

A research model was developed to explain brand relevance when compared with other decision factors in a B2B context. Based on the frameworks developed by Zablah et al. (2010) and Mudambi (2002), the model considers the purchase situation, decision-maker characteristics and firm size as determinants of brand relevance in the decision-making process. One of the most prominent Portuguese construction groups, which comprised three companies, was chosen for the sample of this study. Data were collected through a self-administered, online, cross-sectional survey, resulting in a convenience sample of 87 decision-makers.

Findings suggest that attributes related with brands matter even in B2B rational decision-making processes. However, brands are not important to all organizational buyers or in all situations. Different purchase situations and decision-maker characteristics proved to have an impact on brand relevance, namely, brand reputation, prior purchases and brand awareness. Only firm size was not confirmed as a determinant of brand relevance in the B2B purchasing process.

B2B brand research is scarce, especially for industrial services. By investigating the determinants of brand relevance in a B2B purchasing context, namely, in a construction services setting, this study contributes to bridging this literature gap. Moreover, the few studies on the subject have been largely descriptive in nature and managerially oriented, while this investigation emphasizes hypothesis testing through a proposed research framework. Also, in managerial terms, identifying determinants of the importance given to brands by organizational buyers is critical in deciding when investment in brand development is more likely to payoff.