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Extant literature holds contradictory views about the brand love’s moderation effect in the link between brand failure and consumer’s retaliation. This paper aims to first examine how failure severity correlates with negative emotions and how negative emotions lead to retaliation intention. Then, it probes into opposite moderation effects of brand love in these two stages. Further, it explores contingent factors, including perceived fairness, inferred goodwill, aggressive personality and brand trust, which may moderate “love is blind” effect or “love becomes hate” effect.

A questionnaire survey was conducted among the sample of 293 responses from Thailand, and 239 responses from China. A total of eight hypotheses were tested by adopting hierarchical regression technique and slope analyses.

The results show that consumers facing brand failure suffer negative emotions and then generate retaliation intention. Brand love positively moderates the link between failure severity and negative emotions, which is called “love becomes hate” effect. Meanwhile, brand love negatively moderates the link between negative emotions and retaliation intention, which is called “love is blind” effect. In addition, perceived fairness and inferred goodwill alleviate “love becomes hate” effect, and aggressive personality decreases “love is blind” effect.

This study makes contribution to brand failure literature by revealing twofold moderating roles of brand love in arousing retaliation behavior of consumers who encounter product/service failure, as well as contingent factors of these roles. Also, the research findings provide managerial implications to brand managers as to how to manage brand failure and reduce consumers’ retaliation by manipulating brand love and relevant contingent variables.

This study aims to investigate the generation of negative emotions and behavior in Muslim consumers from their attitude toward offensive advertising. Mediation of brand hate between attitude toward offensive advertising and brand retaliation was examined. The conditional indirect impact of religiosity on attitude toward offensive advertising and brand retaliation through brand hate was also realized.

A cross-sectional research design was used using the mall intercept survey technique. Data were collected from 380 respondents visiting the malls in the areas of Pakistan’s twin cities (Rawalpindi and Islamabad) after ensuring appropriateness for the study. Partial least square–structural equation modeling through SmartPLS software was used as a statistical technique to test the hypotheses.

The findings confirm that attitude toward offensive advertising affects brand hate and brand retaliation positively. The conditional indirect effect of religiosity on the relationship of attitude toward offensive advertising and brand retaliation has also proved significant.

The present study has filled a significant gap in the literature of brand hate by introducing brand hate as a mediator in the relationship of attitude toward offensive advertising and brand retaliation. It further added in the body of knowledge of brand hate by a moderated mediation mechanism of religiosity on the relationship of attitude toward offensive advertising and brand retaliation through brand hate. The present study has considered the non-offensive product being promoted through offensive advertising and explored the impact of attitude toward offensive advertising on brand hate and brand retaliation in Muslim consumers.

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.

This paper introduces the concept of dysfunctional customer behavior toward a brand and argues that when customers perceive that a brand has failed to fulfill its promises, a psychological brand contract breach occurs, which in turn leads to a psychological brand contract violation, which evokes dysfunctional customer behavior toward the brand. In addition, this study investigates whether the impact of a breach of this contract is dependent on brand relationship quality, brand apology and restitution.

Study 1 conducted the online survey and 224 respondents were used for data analysis and the moderating role of brand relationship quality was examined. Study 2 conducted an experiment with 201 participants to test the moderating role of brand apology and restitution.

This study found the moderating role of brand relationship quality, brand apology and brand restitution on the relationship between a psychological brand contract breach and dysfunctional customer behavior toward a brand (i.e. brand-negative word-of-mouth, brand retaliation and brand boycott), which is mediated by psychological brand contract violation.

This study contributes to the theoretical understanding of dysfunctional customer behavior toward a brand by integrating the literature on brand management with the organizational literature on psychological contracts between organizations and their employees. Furthermore, this study sheds light on the effectiveness of reparative actions by the firm after occurrence of the psychological brand contract breach.

This study aims to extend the body of knowledge on brand hate and further examine its significant antecedents and consequences to investigate how brand hate affects consumers’ behavioural responses.

This study used a questionnaire to collect data from 403 consumers of Pakistan’s mobile telecommunication industry. Smart partial least square was then used to analyse the data.

This study provides insights into the conception of brand hate in the context of Pakistani consumers. This study’s findings indicate that “neuroticism”, as a consumer-related antecedent, “perceived price unfairness”, “poor product/service quality” and “post-purchase service failures” as company-controlled determinants have significant impacts on brand hate. This, in turn, leads to brand avoidance and brand retaliation. Managerial implications and avenues for future research are also discussed. This study provides insights into the conception of brand hate in the context of Pakistani consumers.

The original findings of this work can thus provide meaningful guidance for companies to mitigate the spread of brand hate among consumers.

This study aimed at investigating negative past experience (NPE), symbolic incongruity and ideological incompatibility on celebrity brand hate (CBH) within the arts marketing sector.

Anchored on the self-congruity theory (SCT), the study is based on two studies with 618 hip-life music (HLM) listeners in Ghana (Study 1 = 340 face-to-face participants; study 2 = 278 online participants), who responded to 20 celebrities they hate. The study validates Hegner et al.'s (2017) product brand hate (BH) model in the arts sector utilizing the structural equal modeling in testing the research hypotheses.

The study found that negative past experience, symbolic incongruity, and ideological incompatibility significantly influences CBH. Furthermore, CBH significantly influences celebrity brand avoidance (CBA) and negative word-of-mouth (NWoM), brand retaliation, private complaint and brand switching. Nevertheless, CBH had no significant influence on CBA in the second study. In all, BH had the strongest effects on NWoM for products in Hegner et al. (2017) model, whereas in our model BH strongly impacts on brand retaliation for celebrities (i.e. people).

The study provided evidence to marketing scholars, celebrity image managers and brand professionals, on critical factors to consider in building and sustaining celebrity brands as viable currencies for economic leveraging within the arts industry.

Though BH has received academic recognition, little is known about the concept of CBH and its outcomes in the arts marketing literature.

This paper aims to explore how brand relationship quality (BRQ) influences consumers’ perceived sense of justice in the context of service recovery situations.

The authors conducted a survey of 368 Brazilian consumers who experienced real-life automotive service recovery situations. The authors tested their model and underlying hypotheses using structural equation modeling.

Stronger BRQ led to higher levels of perceived justice (distributive, procedural and interactional), which in turn led to higher customer satisfaction of complaint handling. Ultimately, higher customer satisfaction led to lower complaining, lower retaliation and higher purchase intention. The authors' alternative model tested the effects of BRQ sub-dimensions on justice perception. Interestingly, trust produced a “love-is-blind” effect, while intimacy revealed a “love-becomes-hate” effect.

This study assessed BRQ and its sub-dimensions (self-connection, satisfaction, commitment, trust and intimacy) on sense of justice (distributive, procedural and interactional) within service recovery. Also, this study demonstrated the opposing effects of the brand relationship sub-dimensions trust and intimacy on perceptions of justice.

The purpose of this study is to summarize the findings of consumer factor research and to suggest future lines of inquiry connected to branding outcomes. Consumers are comfortable with social media and accept firms occupying the same digital space. However, some consumers more readily engage with firms online than others. Consumer factor antecedents are numerous and yet not fully explored. Online consumer engagement has also been defined and measured in various ways. The resultant outcomes related to branding also have implications for future consumer engagement. Summarizing the findings of consumer factor research and suggesting future lines of inquiry connected to branding outcomes will enhance the understanding of consumer engagement and branding strategies to maximize marketing return on investment.

The authors review literature examining key constructs and sub-dimensions on how consumer factors impact brand engagement and brand outcomes.

Three major research areas specific to consumer factors were identified: consumer status, consumer disposition, personality trait, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation and cultural dimensions. Brand engagement was explored relative to affective, cognitive and behavioral engagement. Lastly, six brand outcomes were explored: brand status, disposition, attitude, affirmation connection and aversion.

This review contributes to the literature through a deeper understanding of consumer factors that lead to consumer engagement and the resultant branding factors of consumer engagement. The authors offer framework that both identifies future research needs, and insights into how firms may create, grow and enhance consumer–brand engagement.

Given the dearth of comprehensive brand engagement frameworks in the literature, the authors offer insights into how consumer factors serve as antecedents to brand engagement and identify a research agenda for advancing the field.

A conceptual confusion has evolved in brand hate (BH) research mainly due to multiple conceptualizations, models and constructs in the field. As such, there is an urgent need to bring these insights together for a holistic understanding of research in BH, fostering its growth. This paper aims to fill this theoretical gap by bringing together the field of BH and delineating opportunities for further research.

A systematic literature review was conducted for a period of about two decades, from 1998 to August 2021. The authors included the English articles published in peer-reviewed academic journals with full texts relevant to this study, leading to a usable sample of 55 articles.

The authors’ findings reveal that the literature has inadequately distinguished BH as emotion and relationship, while the theoretical domain used to explore BH remains largely dominated by the psychology literature. Furthermore, BH research has primarily focused on services, with little distinction made between hatred across product and service context, with most studies set in developed countries. The authors further identify the need to investigate boundary conditions influencing BH and develop a more robust measure of BH to capture its dynamic facet.

By presenting a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the research in BH and highlighting the future research avenues, this study is believed to spur scholarly research and serve as a valuable tool for the researchers in advancing the research in BH.

Analysis of determinants and antecedents of BH provide managers an opportunity to nip the evil in the bud by preventing such situations that may lead to BH. Furthermore, insights into different BH consequences and boundary conditions allow brand managers to devise appropriate strategies to mitigate adverse reactions and foster positive consumer–brand relationships.

This study provides a thorough analysis of the current state of BH research in one place and draws a road map for scholars to further the research in this area.