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Many organizations expect their service engineers, or frontline employees (FLEs), to behave as brand advocates by engaging in favorable communication about the brand and its offerings toward customers. However, this approach is not without risk as customers may be disappointed or even frustrated with brand advocacy behavior in many service encounters. The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of FLEs’ brand advocacy on customer satisfaction with the service encounter, and identify the conditions under which the effects are detrimental. This paper specifically considers service issue severity and product newness as contingency conditions.

Building on social identification theory, the paper builds a conceptual model, which is empirically tested using a data set that matches data from service engineers, customers, and archival records from the after-sales service department of a globally operating business-to-business print and document management solutions provider.

This paper finds that brand advocacy behavior harms customer satisfaction especially in service encounters that involve simple service issues (e.g. maintenance) for products that are new to the market. Fortunately, brand identification can compensate this negative effect under many service conditions. While the joint effect of brand identification and advocacy is most beneficial for severe service issues of new products, no effect on customer satisfaction was found for established products.

This paper identifies those service situations in which brand advocacy is advisable and guides managers toward achieving more favorable customer evaluations.

Past research has considered several FLE branding activities in the frontline but the effects of brand advocacy have not been isolated. In addition, most studies have assumed the effects of employee brand-related behaviors on customer satisfaction to be universally positive rather than negative and focused on antecedents and not on moderators and consequences.

The online brand advocacy behaviors of omnichannel shoppers, who mainly rely on integrated brick-and-mortar stores (recognized as a vital channel for delivering a seamless shopping experience and meeting the dynamic needs of the shoppers), are still understudied. This study aims to investigate how integrated store service quality (ISSQ) may elicit both positive and negative emotions that contribute to a memorable omnichannel shopping experience and have an impact on shoppers' attachment to the store, leading to their exhibition of online brand advocacy behaviors (brand defense, brand positivity, brand knowledge sharing and virtual positive expression).

The study is a cross-sectional, descriptive and quantitative investigation. The research participants were chosen using a purposive sampling technique. Using a validated self-administered questionnaire, data were gathered from 886 Indian omnichannel shoppers who often purchase at the integrated brick-and-mortar store. The proposed conceptual model was tested using Smart PLS software for partial least squares-structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that positive and negative emotions mediate the relationship between ISSQ and memorable omnichannel shopping experiences, subsequently impacting omnichannel shoppers' attachment to the store and leading to online brand advocacy behaviors. The relationship strength perceived by shoppers significantly positively moderated the relationship between store attachment and different online brand advocacy behaviors (brand defense, brand positivity, brand knowledge sharing and virtual positive expression).

The study relied upon single cross-sectional data from the Indian population, where omnichannel retailing is still nascent.

This study addresses the need to investigate the different emotions that arise while evaluating service quality in omnichannel retail purchase journeys leading to memorable shopping experiences. Emphasizing post-purchase behaviors like different online brand advocacy behaviors (brand defense, brand positivity, brand knowledge sharing and virtual positive expression), this study is the first to show that ISSQ might affect four different OBAs through memorable omnichannel shopping experience and the shopper's sense of attachment to the store. The moderating effect of relationship strength perceived by shoppers with the retailer on a few proposed hypotheses was also tested to give managerial recommendations.

This study aims to focus on the information sharing behavior of employees in the context of online brand advocacy based on the cognition–affection–behavior framework.

Online surveys were distributed to 840 employees, and the gathered data was analyzed by using structural equation modeling.

The effects of perceived organizational justice, employee emotions, organizational trust on online brand advocacy and the moderating role of organizational identification were empirically supported in this study. Noteworthy exceptions to these findings included the lack of evidence of the effect of informational justice on emotions, the effect of procedural justice on negative emotion and the effect of negative emotion on online brand advocacy.

This study expands brand activism research by investigating online brand advocacy and the employee context. Moreover, this work also extends online brand advocacy research through the employee points of view.

Prior work underscores the important role of customer advocacy for brands. The purpose of this study is to explore the critical role customers can play as brand heroes. The authors developed and validated a measurement scale composed of properties that are derived from distinct brand hero motivational mechanisms.

The authors conducted one exploratory pilot, using semi-structured interviews, with industry and academic experts, and employed three main studies across varying brands and market settings.

This study explores and empirically demonstrates how the brand hero scale (BHS) is related to, yet distinct from, existing scales of opinion leaders, market mavens, attachment and customer advocacy. The six-item BHS demonstrates convergent, discriminant, nomological and predictive validity across several different brand contexts.

This research extends the extant body of work by identifying and defining brand heroes, developing and validating a parsimonious BHS, and demonstrating how its predictive validity extends both to a range of key advocacy and loyalty customer behaviors.

The study provides provocative insights for marketing researchers and brand managers and ascertains the important role heroes may play for brands in terms of strong customer advocacy and loyalty behaviors.

Building on the theory of meaning, this study shows that identifying and working with brand heroes is of great managerial importance and offers critical avenues for future research.

Users frequently target rival brands through direct criticism or indirect customer insults, yet the impact of such attacks on brand advocacy remains unexplored. The purpose of this study is to classify online attacks into brand-targeted attacks and consumer-targeted attacks and further investigate their differential impacts on brand advocacy and the underlying mechanism and a boundary condition of those impacts.

Three experimental studies using different types of brands (electronics, universities and sports footwear) are conducted to examine the effects of brand-related attack targets on brand advocacy.

This research shows that consumer-targeted attacks trigger higher brand advocacy through increasing perceived identity threat than brand-targeted attacks. Moreover, the effect of consumer-targeted attacks (versus brand-targeted attacks) on brand advocacy is mediated by perceived identity threat and mitigated when consumers’ identification with the attacked brand is strong.

The study’s findings yield practical applications for marketers and brand managers, assisting them in understanding consumers’ reactions to brand attacks. This study serves as a reference for firms to consider leveraging the association between brand identification and brand-related attack targets and uniting with loyal brand fans to manage online brand conflicts.

The present study extends prior literature on customer-brand relationships in the context of online attacks. Through investigating the impacts of brand-targeted and consumer-targeted attacks on brand advocacy, this research offers theoretical insights into consumers’ responses to online attacks with different targets.

This study aims to extend current research efforts by examining the dual role of salesperson brand and organizational identification in driving organizational citizenship behaviors, brand advocacy and ultimately brand market performance.

This study uses an online survey to collect data from a cross-sectional sample of salespeople. The measurement model and proposed research hypotheses are tested with SmartPLS.

Study results show that each level of identification has a stronger influence on the type of behaviors relevant to that foci of identification. That is, salesperson organizational identification has a significant and strong effect on organizational citizenship behavior while the influence of salesperson organizational identification on brand advocacy is not significant. Along the same lines, salesperson identification with the brand significantly influences brand advocacy behaviors but not their overall organizational citizenship behaviors. These empirical findings are consistent with assertions in the literature that variables (antecedents or outcomes) associated with identification at a certain level will have a stronger relationship with identification at that level.

Despite existing research efforts on the potential positive outcomes of salesperson identification, there is less empirical evidence regarding the dual role of brand and organizational identification. This research contributes to the current literature by proposing and empirically examining the differential (identity-matching) antecedents and outcomes of salespeople’s dual identification with the organization and the brand. Furthermore, existing research mostly focuses on organizational or sales management outcomes but not brand specifically related outcomes. Theoretically, this research draws on social identity theory to investigate the combined effect of salesperson brand and organizational identification on key brand-related outcomes. Managerially, this study provides empirically-based suggestions for managers interested in harnessing the power of identification.

Over the past few years online fashion communities have proliferated becoming an increasingly powerful forum for user-generated content, and consequently, the fashion industry has shown great interest in such communities. The purpose of this paper is to review and analyse brand advocacy behaviour within luxury brand accessory forums: to analyse the role these communities play in influencing purchase intention; assessing their contribution to fashion brand love.

The study adopted a netnographic approach to the phenomenon of online luxury accessory communities. The research reports observational data including blog texts and audience comments for four popular forums: The Purse Forum, The Fashion Spot, The Bag Forum (TBF) and Shoe Forum (SF). Although the forums are open to all and are designed to be internationally relevant; the observations were conducted from a base in the UK.

Findings indicate that informants display some unifying characteristics clustered around engagement, involvement, self-concept and self-connection, brand love and hedonic values. Informants however, display some discernible differences as they “rally” to two distinctive totems: first, active luxury brand advocates and second, passive brand advocates. Although subtle, these differences suggest significant possibilities for fashion brand owners.

Further research could include the measurement of brand advocacy to distinguish more clearly between high and low levels of advocacy and the resulting consumer behaviour intentions. One sub-group that would be interesting to explore is that of brand evangelists and their relationship with fashion brands: what are the reasons for treating brands as religious artefacts and can this extreme level of advocacy be developed by marketing? The study focused on observing online posts by self-selected brand advocates. A worthwhile comparison could be made with fashion communities where brand marketers are active participants and how this influences the discourse and actions of brand advocates.

The findings indicate that all forum members are incredibly attached to their brands, but will still consider purchasing several brands as their “evoked set”. Additionally, even when demonstrating involvement, they can operate as passive observers in the online community.

Social media, especially online forums, play an important role in contemporary luxury fashion branding. This study addresses the role these forums play in supporting brand love and the contribution they make to luxury brand advocacy. Membership and influence dynamics are reported; which have resonance to both practitioners and researchers.

Taking the consumer perspective, this paper aims to investigate the effect of counterfeiting awareness on consumer advocacy behaviour towards the brand in a specific context, that is, the luxury brand context.

The authors conducted two surveys among actual and potential consumers of the original brand. Study 1 demonstrated the mediating role of customer-based brand equity between the consumers’ awareness of brand counterfeits and their advocacy behaviour towards the genuine brand. Study 2 showed the moderating role exerted by consumers’ emotional attachment to the brand in this framework.

This work showed specific mechanisms underlying consumer responses to counterfeits, revealing a wide framework able to uncover important positive spillover effects on counterfeited brands.

This framework should be tested on additional brands and integrated with further processes and individual variables to extend our knowledge about consumer responses to counterfeits.

This research recognises counterfeiting as a consumer-led process. The results showed the ambivalent nature of counterfeiting, that is, a threat and an opportunity for the counterfeited brand. In fact, actual and potential consumers are prone to protect the genuine brand. The consequent advocacy behaviour is stimulated by the attempts of consumers of fakes to take possession of the brand experience, and these activate actions of self-protection among consumers of the original brand. Interesting managerial implications are drawn.

This research aims to understand consumer responses to corporate social responsibility (CSR) during an unprecedented public health crisis. Specifically, two studies were conducted to investigate how companies’ different CSR initiatives in the early stage of COVID-19 would influence consumers’ advocacy intention according to their focus (i.e. targets of institutional CSR). The first study examined the moderating role of individuals’ CSR expectancy on the effects of companies’ CSR initiatives on consumers’ brand advocacy intention. The second study further extends the findings of Study 1 by examining the mediating role of perceived brand motive.

Two between-subject online experiments were conducted to explore the impact of three types of institutional CSR initiatives (i.e. community, employee and consumer-centered CSRs) on brand advocacy. Study 1 (N = 380) examined the moderating role of CSR expectancy in influencing consumer responses to institutional CSR initiatives. Study 2 (N = 384) explored the underlying mechanism through examining the mediating role of a company’s value-driven motivation in the process.

Study 1 indicated that institutional CSR, regardless of type, was more effective in generating a more significant brand advocacy intention than a promotional message, measured as a baseline. The impact of different kinds of institutional CSR on consumers’ brand advocacy intentions was significantly moderated by their CSR-related expectations. Specifically, individuals with moderate to high CSR expectancy showed higher brand advocacy intentions in both consumer- and employee-centered CSR initiatives than the promotional message. In comparison, those with low CSR expectancy only showed higher brand advocacy intentions in the community-centered CSR initiative. In addition, as individuals’ CSR expectations rose, the mediation effect of the perceived value-driven motivation became stronger.

The current study includes guiding principles to help companies effectively respond to COVID-19 as corporate citizens by demonstrating the importance of individuals’ CSR expectancy across three CSR initiatives. This study used real-life examples of how leading companies were stepping up CSR efforts and suggested an approach that aligns CSR behaviors with the urgent and fundamental human needs of COVID-19.

In line with the CSR goal of maximizing benefits for stakeholders, this study’s findings signal that situational changes determine CSR expectations and that companies must be highly susceptible to the changes in consumers’ expectations of CSR and their appraisal process of CSR motives to maximize its CSR value.

This study aims to investigate the impact of consumer advocacy on community usefulness and brand avoidance. Moreover, the study scrutinizes the mediating role and impact of organizational feedback/response and moderating role of information credibility.

The explanatory and cross-sectional research design was used in the study. Primary data were collected from broadband internet users and 249 responses gathered across the country. The study sample comprises of individuals sharing unfavorable service experiences on social media.

The key findings of the study highlight that consumer advocacy is a type of complaining method, which is used to help other society members; hence, there is a strong relationship among consumer’s advocacy and society’s usefulness. Brand avoidance is the outcome of stronger reactions by consumer advocates and through efficient organizational feedback, the impact of advocacy can be mitigated. Moreover, the study found that effective organizational explanations can be a useful remedy to brand avoidance. Furthermore, the research revealed that information credibility does not moderate the relationship between consumer advocacy and brand avoidance.

The study findings will help practitioners in determining effective strategies to restrict and control brand avoidance.

The social side of consumer argumentative behavior is still an under-research area, which is addressed in the paper. This is the unique study, which explores the mediating impact of organizational feedback on consumer advocacy, brand avoidance and usefulness for society in the implicit perspective.