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This study explores the underlying mechanism of psychological reactance that leads to online shopping hate in social commerce. Based on self-congruity and psychological reactance theory, this study examines the antecedents (symbolic, functional and emotional incongruence) and consequences (online shopping hate) of psychological reactance among online users toward online shopping. Moreover, this study takes trustworthiness as a moderator in the relationship between attitude ambivalence and psychological reactance.

Data were collected from online users.

The results show that symbolic-incongruence and functional-incongruence are responsible for attitude ambivalence, resulting in high psychological reactance. In addition, the study’s findings reveal that psychological reactance is positively linked with online shopping hate. This study extends and contributes to the self-congruence theory and empirically examines the influence of emotional incongruence. The moderating results reveal that trustworthiness moderated the relationship between attitude ambivalence and psychological reactance. The study findings are helpful for marketing managers to develop social commerce strategies.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.

The study findings are helpful for marketing managers to develop social commerce strategies.

This study explains the underlying mechanism of brand hate through psychological reactance.

The purpose of this paper is to test the impact of symbolic and functional incongruity on brand hate. According to self-congruity theory, symbolic and functional congruence are a critical phenomenon in consumer buying decisions. Therefore, the present study develops a theoretical framework based on self-congruity theory to examine the key determinants of brand hate.

Data were collected only in fast-food chain franchises in the capital city territory of Pakistan. Therefore, it is hard to generalize the findings of this research for customers from different cultural backgrounds.

The results of the study reveal that symbolic and functional incongruence are the primary factors responsible for brand hate among Pakistani fast-food customers. Customers carefully consider both self-image and product attributes when purchasing products.

The research uses the cross-sectional method, which limits the findings’ usefulness in other sectors.

The current research helps policymakers understand the key determinants of brand hate, showing that symbolic incongruence is the primary antecedent. Therefore, policymakers and corporate leaders should consider that Pakistan is an Islamic country where consumer choices of food are not only derived from food quality, food hygiene and service quality, but also the symbolic image (i.e. halal food) is a vital determinant of consumption.

This study contributes to the literature by discussing the above issue and presenting quantitative data. This research extends the literature by testing and validating a conceptual model that includes two types of congruence (symbolic and functional) to study brand hate. The proposed conceptual model provides a novel, theoretical, self-congruity point of view on brand hate.

The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the determinants and consequences of psychological reactance in the online shopping context. Leveraging the psychological reactance and self-congruity theories, functional and symbolic discrepancies enhance the psychological reactance toward online shopping. In addition, trustworthiness moderates the impact of online customers attitude ambivalence on their psychological reactance.

The authors conduct an empirical study on online customer cognitive factors. In this research paper, the postpositivism research view is used. The Smart PLS-SEM is used to analyze the data.

The current study findings reveal that self-concept and operational incongruence (i.e. symbolic and functional) are the main factors that lead to psychological reactance and resulting in online shopping hate. Poor website quality and other matters are so significant they create functional incongruence. Moreover, low trustworthiness strengthens psychological reactance in the online shopping hate context.

This study extends the psychological reactance and self-congruence theories to online shopping. Previously, literature has extensively studied the social commerce intention.

The purpose of the article is to investigate the impact of organizational culture on software process improvement (SPI). Is cultural congruence between an organization and an adopted process model required? How can the level of congruence between an organizational culture and the values and assumptions underlying an adopted process model be assessed?

The competing values framework and its associated assessment instrument are used in a case study to establish an organizational culture profile of a software development business unit within the case company. The instrument is supplemented with a technique to produce culture profiles of texts such as process models like the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) and the case company's quality management system. The different profiles are subsequently analyzed and compared.

The culture profile of the CMMI confirms previous research and depicts a result‐oriented, formalized, and structured organization. A comparison with the company's quality management system shows congruent culture profiles suggesting that the case company has succeeded in capturing underlying assumptions of the CMMI when updating the quality management system. The analysis also reveals the organizational culture profile of the business unit to be incongruent with the quality management system's profile. This disconfirms previous research claiming that congruence is a prerequisite. Further analysis reveals that actions were taken by managers in the case company to address the cultural challenges and successfully implement new processes. It is, therefore, concluded that cultural incongruence is not an insurmountable barrier to SPI. By comparing cultural profiles, some SPI implementation challenges become evident and that in turn allows for effective SPI management action.

The research is based on a single case study and that is sufficient to disconfirm existing research. Additional research is, however, needed to validate both the proposed text analysis technique as well as the proposed process for assessing and managing cultural challenges confronting SPI projects.

SPI managers are provided with a more complex view of organizational culture in which congruence is not a necessity. SPI managers can choose to compare culture profiles and decide how to address incongruences. To that end the text analysis technique is offered as a web service that allows for analysis of all text‐based process models and standards, and of internal process documentation.

The proposed culture management process, including the text analysis technique, is a cost‐efficient approach to analyzing and providing the basis for managing cultural challenges during SPI in a specific company. The process provides understanding and guidance in dealing with the specific challenges faced by software companies during SPI.

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.

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 aims at examining the role of the e-store brand personality congruence/incongruence of a multichannel apparel retailer in the formation of consumers' perceived e-store brand fit and e-store patronage intention, based on the concept of image congruence.

An online survey was conducted with a US national sample of 458 female consumers (20–50 years old) who had shopped for clothing online.

Results revealed that e-store brand personality incongruence in three personality dimensions had a negative impact on consumers' e-store patronage intention directly as well as indirectly by reducing the consumers' global perception of the e-store brand fit. Further, the retailer's relevance to the consumer moderated the relationship between the perceived e-store brand fit and e-store patronage intention in that this relationship was significantly greater among consumers with a high (vs low) perceived self-relevance of the retail brand.

The findings highlight the importance of symbolically integrated cross-channel brand management for multichannel apparel retailers by clearly identifying their brand personality and carefully crafting it into their e-store interface design and e-store visual merchandising to convey the brand personality.

This study expands the application of image congruence to the cross-channel image congruence phenomenon in multichannel retailing environments by examining the e-store brand image congruence employing both direct and indirect approaches.

The paper seeks to explain the collaborative intent, trust development, and conflict resolution in a headquarters‐subsidiary relationship in a new product launch context in an emerging market.

Grounded theory development is employed through personal interviews with senior executives of selected multinational firms operating in Turkey.

A major challenge in collaboration is convincing both parties to the dyad that the expertise of the other party is essential for effective collaboration.

The findings are based solely on looking at the subsidiary side of the subsidiary‐HQ dyad in a single country, which limits their generalizability. Since we did not interview the HQ side of this dyad, speculations made about the possible reactions of HQ personnel to subsidiary actions must be interpreted with caution.

The perceptions of both parties play a far more important role than the facts or perceptions of just one party when it comes to relationships and conflict resolution. Both parties need to pay more attention to the possible causes of means incongruence and take perception gaps and the other side's needs and expertise into account when approaching collaboration and conflict resolution.

Agency theory is extended to a multinational firm‐subsidiary context in order to suggest mechanisms for resolving conflict through increased communication, greater trust in each other's capabilities, and greater collaboration in meeting common challenges. A diagnostic and prescriptive framework and mechanisms are also offered through which disruptive conflict can be transformed into functional conflict and collaboration.

This study examined donor development processes in a faithbased, 501(c)(3) publicly-supported, tax-exempt organizational setting. The conceptual framework is relationship marketing theory as informed from a systems theory alignment perspective. Organization-public relationship (OPR) dynamically predicts donor willingness to contribute unrestricted funds. It is proffered that the discrepancy variable, “values-fit incongruence,” significantly affects this dynamic. This contention is explored by asking the following two questions: (a) does donor-organization values-fit incongruence significantly negatively predict donor willingness to contribute unrestricted funds, and b) is the OPR construct strengthened with the patent inclusion of values-fit incongruence as an interactive moderator variable. Results suggest values-fit incongruence significantly negatively predicts donor willingness to contribute unrestricted funds. The results also suggest the OPR model is not strengthened by patently including the values-fit incongruence variable, as it may already be latently accounted for.

Previous research demonstrates the importance of product category fit in evaluating brand alliances. However, many factors determine fit between alliance partners. For example, conclusions from brand extension research suggest that the evaluation is a question not only of product category fit, but also of brand concept consistency. Therefore, this study introduces brand concept consistency in research on brand alliances.

The paper builds on the categorization and incongruence literature. An experiment was employed to test the two hypotheses in the study.

The results indicate that both product category fit and brand concept consistency influence consumers' evaluations. However, the results also show that product category fit is important in only functional and mixed‐brand concept‐based alliances. For expressive brand alliances, product category fit is not important in evaluating the alliance.

Managers should take care in finding potential alliance partners who have brands that in some way, either on the product category level or in brand concept, fit well with their company's brands. However, managers of a functional brand should find a partner whose brand has high product category fit, since low‐fit partners presumably will hurt the potential alliance.

The paper demonstrates that brand concept consistency, not only product category fit, is an important variable in consumer evaluations of brand alliances.