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This study aims to examine the effects of celebrity negative publicity on attitude towards brand, corporation, brand reputation and corporate reputation, both directly and through the moderating effects of social media involvement, brand commitment, identification and attribution (both types). Associative network theory has been used to explain these effects.

A quantitative survey of 550 respondents was carried out in London and surrounding areas. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data.

The findings suggest that celebrity negative publicity affects brand reputation and corporate reputation. Further, the moderating effects of social media involvement and brand commitment on attitude towards brand and corporation, identification on attitude towards brand, attribution types on attitude towards corporation were not found.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to examine the effects of celebrity negative publicity on attitudes towards brand, attitude towards corporation, brand reputation and corporation reputation, directly, and through the moderating effects of attribution (both types), identification, commitment and social media. Findings from this study will minimise the gap in the literature on the topic and will help managers and policymakers to understand the effects of celebrity negative publicity in detail.

This paper aims to investigate whether the interactional effects of recommendation valence, tie strength and service type produce different effects on attitude and buying intention in a social networking context.

A 2 × 3 × 3 between-subject experiment was carried out, involving 616 participants, and MANOVA was used to test hypotheses.

The interactions of valence by tie strength and valence by service type affect attitude, but not intention. The review valence × tie strength × service type interaction influences both attitude and intention, and its effect on intention is fully mediated by attitude.

Negative recommendations for credence and experiential services communicated by individuals with no-tie relationships have a strong negative effect on attitude. However, positive recommendations from strong and weak ties for search and experience services are more influential than recommendations from no ties for credence services.

The results are explained by using cue sufficiency theory, which suggests that a single extreme cue serves as a defining feature.

This research aimed to find whether information about a product can give rise to negative perceptions even in inert situations (nocebo effects), and to understand how price levels impact such judgments.

In all experiments, participants were exposed to negative product information in the form of potential side-effects. In an initial study, a higher non-discounted versus a discounted price frame was presented for a health drink after customers were exposed to negative aspects. Then, in experiment 1, price (high vs low) and exposure to information (no information vs negative information) was manipulated for skin creams where participants physically evaluated the cream. In experiment 2, price was manipulated at three levels (low, high, discounted) orthogonally with product information (no negative information vs with negative information) to get a more nuanced understanding.

In the initial study, after exposure to negative information, the non-discounted group had more positive ratings for the drink. Study 1 showed that reading about negative information resulted in a nocebo effect on perception of dryness (side-effect). Moreover, when no information was presented, perception of dryness by low and high price groups were similar but in the face of negative information, perception of dryness by low-price group was more pronounced compared to a high-price group. Study 2 conceptually replicated the effect and also confirmed that not only discounts (commonly linked with product quality), but absolute price levels also show a similar effect.

Nocebo effects have been rarely documented in consumer research. This research showed how simply reading generically about potential side effects gives rise to nocebo effects. In addition, even though marketers might find it tempting to lower prices when there is negative information about certain product categories, such an action could backfire.

To the best of our knowledge, the link between observable nocebo effects and its link with pricing actions is a novel research thread. We were able to show a nocebo effect on product perception after reading about negative information and also find that a higher price can mitigate the nocebo effect to some extent.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of buzz about the focal brand on competing brands’ attitudes.

Brand-related buzz can be defined as “a general sense of [positive or negative] excitement about or interest in [a brand], as reflected in or generated by word of mouth” (Oxford dictionary). The authors investigate the spillover effects of such positive and negative buzz on brand attitudes of 648 brands in 43 categories over five years.

The authors find that spillover effects are widespread across product categories and affect competing brands through (negative) halo effect and (unfavorable) preference substitution. The authors do not find evidence of positive spillover effects for non-focal brands.

The authors provide generalizable evidence that positive and negative buzz spills over competing brands’ attitudes for hundreds of brands across the largest sectors of the US economy. Interestingly, positive and negative buzz have asymmetric effects on consumer attitudes. These effects vary by consumer attitude metric and are moderated by brand news intensity, strength and similarity.

First, marketing managers should monitor the buzz of competing brands. Second, if managers are concerned with impressions, they should intervene when there is a negative buzz about competitors (halo effect). Third, managers should stimulate positive buzz to negatively affect their competitors’ purchases. Fourth, managing a smaller brand has advantages regarding impressions and recommendations, while news intensity can shield from negative spillover effects for impressions. Finally, brand similarity amplifies the spillover effects across the board.

This paper provides evidence that spillover effects are pervasive and urges marketing managers and academics to incorporate competing buzz in their frameworks and strategies.

The purpose of this study is to understand the occurrence, formation and magnitude of negative effects for sponsors of rival sports teams and to identify means to counteract negative sponsorship effects.

Surveys measure fans’ identification with their team as well as attitudes toward rival teams and their sponsors in a soccer context. An experiment introduces sponsorship communication activities that aim at mitigating negative sponsorship effects by shifting the focus of the sponsorship.

Results from surveys and experiments demonstrate that identification with a sports team negatively affects perceptions of a rival team, negative perceptions of a rival team negatively affect perceptions of its sponsors, this effect is stronger for fans with higher levels of team identification, companies can improve perceptions of rival team sponsors by shifting the focus of sponsorship-linked communication activities, but attenuating negative sponsorship effects is more difficult to achieve for fans with higher levels of identification with their team.

Further studies need to disentangle mitigating effects of framing sponsorship communication and investigate in greater depth conditions under which sponsorship leverage can emphasize specific social identities of sports fans and enhance the inclusiveness of fans’ self-categorization.

Companies can learn from this study how they can frame, design and use sponsorship communication activities to mitigate negative sponsorship effects in the context of rival-team sponsorship.

The study is one of the few studies addressing negative effects of sponsorship. In particular, the study provides first insights into how social identity theory, social categorization theory and framing theory work together with theories of image transfer in both the formation and the attenuation of negative sponsorship outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderating effect of trusting beliefs about a store on country‐of‐origin (COO) effects. The paper suggests that three trusting beliefs (ability beliefs, benevolence beliefs and integrity beliefs) about a retail store moderate negative effects of COO on product evaluation and purchase intention. However, under high manufacturer risk conditions, only benevolence beliefs moderate the negative COO effects.

The toy industry is chosen as the study context. The first three hypotheses are tested with survey data collected from 224 participants. The last hypothesis is tested with data collected from 338 participants. Hierarchical moderated regression was used in the testing of the hypotheses.

The results show that while only benevolence and integrity beliefs about a store weaken the negative effect of COO on product evaluations, all three trusting beliefs lessen the negative impact of COO on consumers' purchase intentions. However, when manufacturer risk is high, only benevolence beliefs have a significant moderating effect.

The findings show that manufacturers can reverse the negative cycle, or at least minimize their losses, if they choose those retailers that consumers have high trusting beliefs about as their channel members. Similarly, if they can signal that they are benevolent and honest stores, retailers can balance their customers' negative evaluations of products made in certain countries with negative image.

Given the recent product recalls and concerns, the toy industry presents an ideal case to study the effect of trusting beliefs on COO effects. Nonetheless, the focus on a single industry does limit the generalizability of the findings. The authors recommend that future researchers examine these relationships in studies focusing on other product categories.

To the best of authors' knowledge, this is the first study that investigates the impact of individuals' trusting beliefs about a store on COO effects.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to research on the cognitive capacity theory. The paper aims to examine the effects of advertising recipients' positive and negative associations, that is their memories and fantasies evoked by the advertising stimulus, on brand attitude for advertisements that require little effort to process; focusing on positively framed advertisements.

This paper suggests a model on the effects of positive and negative association on brand attitude and tests it using partial least square. Advertisements that are easy to process were selected in a pre‐test.

It is shown that if advertisements are easy to process, the effects of consumers' associations depend on their favourableness: positive associations have a positive effect and negative associations have a negative effect on brand attitude. These findings are an extension of knowledge on the effects of associations, because for informational advertisements previous research has demonstrated that associations generally have a negative effect on brand attitude.

Results of this study suggest that evoking positive memories and fantasies in the target group enhances the effectiveness of advertisements that require little effort to process.

Effects of associations on brand attitude have not been studied for advertisements that require little effort to process. Previous studies have not distinguished positive and negative associations; this study analyses their effects separately.

This study aims to investigate the effects of perceived tangible and intangible resource inequity and the moderating effect of long‐term orientation on future collaboration.

Outcome and moderating measures were developed using structural equation modeling. Data were collected at the project level of customer‐supplier relationships via survey among German and Swiss firms. The results were generated with regression and subgroup analyses.

The higher the negative tangible inequity or intangible inequity, the lower the customers' willingness to collaborate on future projects with suppliers. However, negative intangible inequity showed a stronger negative effect than negative tangible inequity. When long‐term orientation is in the model, the effects of inequity are stronger in short‐term relationships.

The study extends equity theory and provides a fruitful basis for future research at the project level of the customer‐supplier relationships. Specifically, since the effects of negative intangible inequity are stronger than the effects of negative tangible inequity, intangible resources may be more important than tangible resources to the future of customer‐supplier relationships. Since prior research does not delineate between tangible and intangible inequity, this is a unique finding and an important contribution to the application of equity theory in business. Cultural homogeneity is a limitation of the study. Furthermore, a longitudinal study could add insight.

This research offers a distinction between the effects of tangible and intangible resource inequity; it disaggregates the concepts of tangible and intangible resource inequity and tests the effects of either “positive inequity” (i.e. receiving more than deserved) or “negative inequity” (i.e. receiving less than deserved); and it separates short‐term from long‐term oriented companies to allow for a more discrete analysis, than prior approaches, of the effects of inequity on the propensity for future collaboration.

Drawing from both the transactional theory of stress and the conservation of resources theory, this paper sets out to investigate the role of demand-specific challenge and hindrance appraisal of emotional demands, as well as time pressure and perceived goal progress within the challenge–hindrance framework.

For this research, 91 employees provided daily diary data for one working week. Focusing on within-persons effects, multilevel moderated mediation models using multilevel path analyses were applied.

Both emotional demands and time pressure exert positive effects on work engagement when people expect resource gain (challenge appraisal), independent of actual resource gain (achievement). Furthermore, results show that goal progress buffers negative effects of perceived blocked resource gain (hindrance appraisal) on both emotional and motivational well-being.

This research proposes an extension and refinement of the challenge–hindrance stressor framework to explain health-impairing and motivational processes of emotional demands and time pressure, combining reasoning from both appraisal and resource theory perspectives. The study identifies demand-specific challenge and hindrance appraisals as mediators linking demands to emotional and motivational well-being, emphasizing the influence of goal progress as a resource on these relations.