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1 – 10 of 21Essi Pöyry and Salla-Maaria Laaksonen
In brand activism, a brand promotes contested sociopolitical causes to highlight its values. Brand activism also alienates those consumers who disagree with the cause, who might…
Abstract
Purpose
In brand activism, a brand promotes contested sociopolitical causes to highlight its values. Brand activism also alienates those consumers who disagree with the cause, who might, consequently, target the brand with critical, negative or even aggressive actions. This paper aims to study the triggers and strategies of consumers’ antibrand actions given in response to brand activism.
Design/methodology/approach
Qualitative content analysis and multiple correspondence analysis were used to study consumer responses directed at a chocolate brand’s campaign that advocated civilized online conversions and opposed hate speech, a politically heated topic. In total, 1,615 messages were collected from social media platforms.
Findings
Field infringement, political accusations and questioned impact of the campaign triggered consumers to turn against the campaign. Strategies to undermine it included boycotting, discrediting the brand and trapping. Trapping – creatively using technological affordances to create harm to the brand – was typically triggered by political associations.
Research limitations/implications
Findings relate to the critical responses regarding one campaign only.
Practical implications
By understanding the political discussion around the chosen cause, including the opponents’ typical triggers and strategies, brand activism can more credibly advocate for contested social causes and communicate brand values.
Originality/value
Political antibrand actions are distinct from the previously identified functional and ethical antibrand actions, and they are noninstrumental by nature. Practices that are native to social media are central to political antibrand actions, and social media platforms contribute to how such disappointment is articulated and acted upon.
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Samuel Kristal, Carsten Baumgarth and Jörg Henseler
This paper aims to investigate the ways in which “non-collaborative co-creation” can affect brand equity as perceived by independent observers. It reports a study of the different…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the ways in which “non-collaborative co-creation” can affect brand equity as perceived by independent observers. It reports a study of the different effects on that perception attributable to non-collaborative co-creation that takes the form of either “brand play” or “brand attack” and is executed either by established artists or mainstream consumers.
Design/methodology/approach
A 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment (brand play versus brand attack; consumer versus artist) measured observers’ perception of brand equity before and after exposure to purpose-designed co-created treatments.
Findings
Non-collaborative co-creation has a negative effect on observers’ perceptions of brand equity and brand attack, causing a stronger dilution of brand equity than brand play. Artists either mitigate the dilution or have a positive effect on those perceptions.
Research limitations/implications
Future research could usefully investigate the relative susceptibility of brands to non-collaborative co-creation, the effects on brands of higher complexity than those in our experiment, exposed in higher-involvement media, and the effects of more diverse forms of co-creation.
Practical implications
Brand managers must recognise that co-creation carries considerable risks for brand equity. They should closely monitor and track the first signs of non-collaborative co-creation in progress. It could be beneficial to recruit artists as co-creators of controlled brand play.
Originality/value
This study offers a more complete insight into the effect of non-collaborative co-creation on observers’ perceptions of brand equity than so far offered by the existing literature. It connects the fields of brand management and the arts by investigating the role and impact of artists as collaborative or non-collaborative co-creators of brand equity.
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The purpose of this study is to explore whether a group dynamics perspective still exists in the scientific study of groups and what factors may account for the current situation.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explore whether a group dynamics perspective still exists in the scientific study of groups and what factors may account for the current situation.
Design/methodology/approach
Alongside reflections based on my professional experience, I have analyzed the main academic journals that publish group research.
Findings
A group dynamics perspective is almost totally absent in the scientific study of groups. Contributing factors to this state of affairs are disciplinary developments in psychology (e.g. individualization, experimentalization and specialization), the demise of the status of psychoanalysis, changes in the meaning and manifestation of the “group,” and effects of New Public Management.
Originality/value
The study offers a critical perspective on current group research practices and considers these in a larger (social and historical) context. It advocates a group dynamics perspective for the study of groups, based on systems-psychodynamic insights.
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