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This study aims to examine how consumers use a moral reasoning process to defend preferred celebrity and celebrity brand images and specifically, the processes for supporting the celebrity’s comeback after a transgression.

Study 1 measures consumers’ preference for celebrities and their support for them after a transgression and tests whether the celebrity’s image moderates consumers’ preference for celebrities and their support of them to come back. Study 2 examines the effect of the specific moral reasoning processes and tests whether it leads to different levels of support after a transgression, depending on the primed celebrity image.

Results show celebrity preference is positively related to consumer support of a celebrity’s return after a wrongdoing. This relationship is moderated by the celebrity’s image (Study 1). The authors find that a celebrity primed with a role model image receives more support for a comeback in the moral rationalization condition, whereas a celebrity primed with a bad boy image receives more support in the moral decoupling condition (Study 2).

First, in the empirical studies, using a pre-test, the authors chose transgressions that were unrelated to the celebrities’ profession and that had an intermediate level of severity. Moreover, these transgressions were manipulated using information about fictitious celebrities to control for pre-existing respondents’ differences on information or biases about them and confounding characteristics between identified celebrities. Despite the control benefits, the disadvantage of this approach could be that respondents’ involvement with the celebrities may be generally lower as compared to studies that use known celebrities (Fong and Wyer, 2012). The involvement or attachment with known celebrities by respondents may be a factor that determines the power of a specific human brand. By using fictitious celebrities, the effects related to human brands may have been bounded or based more on celebrity archetypes. Another limitation is that both Studies 1 and 2 collected data using an online panel. To make the results more generalizable, the authors can contemplate on-site experimental designs or a qualitative approach in future research. The latter may also facilitate the use of known human brands to understand how they interact with other mediating factors without having to worry about control of confounds between respondents. Finally, there is a potential inflation of moral sensitivity stemming from measuring moral reasoning in Study 1 after informing participants about a celebrity transgression. While the authors followed other studies in this procedure, for the effects related to measuring across different image groups this would be less critical, as all participants would be affected in a similar way. However, there remains the possibility that the inflation bias could be higher for one celebrity type and could be a limitation or even a topic considered for future research that delves into specific relationships between celebrity image type and morality judgment bias.

The results of this study have managerial implications for the various stakeholders involved. First, for celebrities, especially role models, living up to expectations congruent to the performances and brand images that they have developed is important. This will necessitate them to manage their consumers’ expectations, and perhaps, suggest that they do not create unrealistically high ones. Although consumer expectations have not often taken center stage as a theoretical issue in recent consumer research, they may still be important for consumers’ evaluations and choices (Howard and Sheth, 1969). In addition, this study offers implications for public relations agencies or management companies that promote and manage celebrities. Although consumers in many countries have a higher preference for celebrities with a role model image, the authors see that being such a human brand can be potentially counterproductive amid scandals. If the level of supporters’ commitment for a celebrity is high and the attachment relationship is strong, then constructing a diverse and flexible image spectrum may be more advantageous in the long term than adhering to just the role model image. In the event that a misbehavior has occurred, celebrities, to the extent that they can identify their brand image, need to assess more precisely the type of moral judgment and support they are likely or unlikely to receive after the transgressions. Based on that analysis, the misbehaving celebrities may have to adjust the rehabilitation period or act of redemption. Finally, the conventional wisdom used by advertising agencies or corporations that the bad boy image of celebrities is more vulnerable to a negative event, needs to be reconsidered (Aaker et al., 2004). This rethinking is aligned with other past research that have also argued that transgressions do not necessarily have an adverse impact on associated brands (Lee and Kwak, 2016). Thus, when advertising agencies use celebrities, they must consider the congruence between the human brand image and the company and review the source and depth of the reasons why supporters like celebrities using a broader perspective.

Although consumers in many countries have a higher preference for celebrities with a role model image, the authors see that being such a human brand can be potentially counterproductive amid scandals. For them constructing a diverse and flexible image spectrum may be more advantageous in the long term than adhering to just the unrealistic role model image. Celebrities need to assess more precisely the type of moral judgment and support they are likely or unlikely to receive after the transgressions. Based on that analysis, the misbehaving celebrities may have to adjust the rehabilitation period or act of societal redemption.

The study makes three key contributions by combining celebrity image and moral psychology to assess how consumers pass moral judgment on celebrities who transgress according to different image types, examining the mediation effect of moral reasoning in the relationship between consumer preferences for a celebrity and their support for them after transgressions and looking at consumer support for a comeback of the transgressing celebrity as the dependent variable and not just the effects of the immediate fallout. The value of this study, therefore, lies in understanding the specific dynamics between consumer preference, celebrity image, moral reasoning processes and consumer support to accept a celebrity’s return after a transgression.

This paper aims to examine the impact that brand transgressions, and the effect of an apology or lack thereof, have on consumers’ intentions to co-create with a brand, perceived brand equity and brand love, and compares these effects on brands that are viewed positively versus brands that are viewed negatively.

Two studies were deployed. In the first study, a 2 × 2 between subjects factorial design using fictitious brands is used to test the hypotheses. The second study seeks to replicate the findings of the first study by using a brand connected to a real retailer.

Regardless of a brand issuing an apology or not, co-creation, higher perceived brand equity and increased levels of brand love, are more likely to occur when a consumer views a brand as being positive versus negative. However, the results vary when the consumer has a prior level of knowledge and a stronger relationship with a brand.

This paper focuses on consumers between the ages of 18 and 29 years. While the findings of Study 1 are mostly replicated in Study 2, a more generalizable sample could create additional insights into the impact of brand transgressions and issuing or not an apology.

The findings of this paper add to the current literature on co-creation, brand equity, brand love and theory of reasoned action, in terms of the impact of an apology, or lack thereof, on brand transgressions and consequent consumer responses.

This paper aims to examine the role of religiosity on consumers’ forgiveness when celebrities get involved in transgression. The celebrity’s reaction and its impact on consumers’ forgiveness is tested as well. In addition, consumers’ attitudes towards the brand and celebrity as well as purchase intention for the endorsed brand are examined both before and after the transgression.

Data (n = 356) were collected through a self-administered online survey and analysed though structural equation modelling in AMOS 26.

The results show that consumers’ attitude towards celebrity, brand and purchase intention gets weaker once the celebrity gets into transgression. Consumers tend to forgive more if the celebrity apologises (vs denies) for the wrongdoing. The hypothesised relationship between attitude towards celebrity and purchase intention did not sustain after the transgression. In addition, consumers’ intrinsic religiosity strengthens the relationship between attitude towards the celebrity and purchase intention.

The findings of this research present valuable implications for brands practitioners. Brands should formulate actionable contingency plans to mitigate the negative ramifications of celebrity transgressions. Specifically, intrinsic religiosity and celebrity apologies should assist consumers in forgiving the transgression and negate the implications that could have arisen if the celebrity instead denied the transgressions.

This research extends the previous research by examining religiosity and forgiveness within the context of celebrity transgressions. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first few research studies to consider the role religiosity plays in consumers’ intention to forgive celebrity transgressions.

This paper aims to contribute to the emerging body of research on firestorms, specifically on the inflammatory user-generated content (UGC) created in response to brand transgressions. By analyzing and segmenting UGC created and shared in the wake of three different events, the authors identify which type of inflammatory message is most likely to be widely shared; thus, contributing to a possible online firestorm.

Tweets were collected involving brand transgressions in the retail, fast food and technology space from varying timeframe and diverse media coverage. Then, the tweets were coded for message intention and analyzed with linguistics software to determine the message characteristics and framing. A two-step cluster analysis identified three types of UGC.

The authors found that message dimensions and the framing of tweets in the context of brand transgressions differed in characteristics, sentiment, call to action and the extent to which the messages were shared. The findings contradict traditional negative word-of-mouth studies involving idiosyncratic service and product failure. During online brand firestorms, rational activism messages with a call to action, generated in response to a firm’s transgression or “sparks,” have a higher likelihood of being shared (virality).

This research provides novel insights into UGC created after brand transgressions. Different types of messages created after these events vary in the extent that they “fan the flames” of the transgression. A message typology and flowchart are provided to assist managers in identifying and responding to three message types: ash, sparks and embers.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how brand communities collectively react towards brand transgressions, an area where previous research has been scant.

This study adopts a netnographic approach in studying the reactions of one particular brand community and its reactions to a marketer-initiated brand transgression.

Building on coping theory, we find evidence of brand community coping, a temporally bounded process in which the community seeks to come to terms with and even overturn the transgression. Overall, we define the brand community coping process as unfolding through three overlapping and temporally bounded stages of (1) making the problem communal, (2) exploring the problem’s meaning, and (3) co-creating responses.

Studies of consumer coping particularly in cases of brand transgressions have predominantly adopted an individualistic approach to coping, or have treated communities as coping resources for individual consumers. This study is the first study to truly look at brand communities’ collective coping endeavors. We also offer managerial implications by questioning the overtly positive tone of brand co-creation literature and underline potential threats to marketers when consumers decide to use their co-creative practices to punish the marketer.

Moral transgressions committed by person-brands can negatively impact consumers through the transgression’s diagnosticity (severity, centrality and consistency). This paper aims to test how a transgression’s centrality and consistency impact important consumer perceptions and behavioral intentions toward a person-brand, holding constant the transgression in question. These outcomes are crucial for person-brands to understand how to minimize and manage the impact of a given transgression.

This paper uses three online consumer experiments to manipulate transgression diagnosticity via centrality and consistency and identifies the resulting impact on consumer-brand identification, trustworthiness and consumer digital engagement intentions through PROCESS models.

High-diagnosticity transgressions lower consumer digital engagement intentions regarding the person-brand and their endorsed products. This effect is serially mediated by consumer-brand identification, as predicted by social identity theory, and by perceived trustworthiness of the person-brand.

Person-brands should emphasize the nondiagnostic nature of any transgressions in which they are involved, including a lack of centrality and consistency with their brand, and guard against the appearance of diagnostic transgressions.

This paper shows that transgression diagnosticity impacts consumer engagement through the pathway of consumer-brand identification and trustworthiness. It also manipulates aspects of diagnosticity that can be influenced by the person-brand (centrality and consistency) while holding the transgression constant. As such, this paper extends the literature on transgressions, on person-branding strategy, and on social identity theory.

Purpose – To motivate efforts within the ethics, fairness, and justice literatures to address some largely unexamined questions regarding how reactions to potential transgressions might depend on the group context.

Design/approach – We draw on prior literature on ethics, fairness, and justice to develop a framework that highlights gaps in the literature. We develop a section on future work that provides suggestions to researchers on how to address these gaps.

Findings – Although it is important to understand how to prevent transgressions from being committed, we start from the point of view that they are likely to remain an unfortunate aspect of organizational life. Thus, it is important to consider how people not only interpret transgressions, but also how they might respond after such transgressions occur. Through a review of the prior literature, we highlight the relative lack of research on such responses, particularly at a collective level, by considering (1) the types and implications of attributions made for transgressions in a group context and (2) how collective reactions to potential transgressions may ultimately differ from those of individuals.

Originality/value – We attempt to spur greater understanding of how groups understand and collectively react to potential transgressions. By doing so, we motivate greater attention toward an important, though underexplored, area in the literature.

This study aims to investigate how customer satisfaction and loyalty evolve during the initial years of a business services relationship. In addition to assessing the potential for dynamic effects, models explore how relational transgressions such as very poor sales and implementation experiences might moderate customer satisfaction dynamics and the relationship trajectory.

Analyses utilize structural equation modeling on longitudinal data obtained over a three‐year period from customers contracting with a global provider for IT services.

Results reveal significant dynamic effects for satisfaction across two successive time periods but not for loyalty intentions, suggesting prime importance for finding ways to continually satisfy customers. Customers' initial sales and implementation experiences negatively moderated the dynamic effects of satisfaction from time 1 to time 2, but not for time 2 to time 3. This result indicates that customers who experience relational transgressions strongly update their perceptions with new information in early phases of the relationship, but subsequently, customers anchor future evaluations using their existing perceptions.

Whereas a growing amount of work explores how satisfaction and loyalty evolve for consumers, there is very little empirical knowledge to help managers understand how business customers' evaluations shift or follow certain trajectories based on initial relationship experiences. This study aims to address this important gap and finds evidence that customers do rely on their satisfaction perceptions from previous periods and, given time, can move beyond past relational transgressions when they evaluate their providers.

A growing literature shows that (integral) emotions arising in response to firm transgressions may influence consumer punishment. However, incidental emotions (which are unrelated to the decision at hand) can also be powerful drivers of consumer decision-making and could influence responses to firm transgressions. This paper aims to examine the role of incidental gratitude, as compared to incidental pride and a control condition, in shaping the acceptance of questionable consumer behavior toward a transgressing firm and the mediating role of self-righteousness in this regard.

Four experimental studies are conducted to examine the effect of gratitude, as compared to pride and a control condition, on the acceptance of questionable consumer behavior against a transgressing firm. Further, this research tests the underlying mechanism and a boundary condition of the predicted effect.

The results show that consumers experiencing gratitude, as compared to pride and a control condition, judge a questionable consumer behavior directed against a transgressing firm as less acceptable. These different emotion effects are found to be explained by self-righteousness. The findings also demonstrate that an apology by the firm attenuates the effect of emotions on consumer response toward the transgressing firm.

The present research contributes to the literature on consumer punishment by identifying the role of incidental emotions in determining self-righteousness and ethical judgments. The research focuses on and contrasts the effects of two specific positive emotions – gratitude and pride.

This paper offers managerial implications for firms involved in a transgression by highlighting the potential of gratitude. Notably, the findings of this research suggest that gratitude activation via marketing communications may help firms mitigate the negative effects of transgression events.

The present research provides a novel perspective on when and how positive emotions, such as gratitude and pride, can differentially and systematically influence ethical judgment toward a transgressing firm.

Despite the harmful impact of supervisor transgressions, they have received little empirical attention. The purpose of this paper is to addresses this important gap, examining the nature of transgressions committed at work by supervisors against subordinates.

A critical incident technique was employed in which employees described a transgression committed by their supervisor. Qualitative responses were then analyzed, resulting in the emergence of supervisor transgression themes.

In total, 11 themes emerged, including: performance criticisms, demeaning insults, false accusations, undue demands, unfair employment decisions, inconsiderate treatment, inequitable behavior, inappropriate contextual selections, disregard of opinions, undersupplied resources, and underprovided recognition.

While this approach is not without limitations, including the potential for participant memory error and researcher analytical bias, it offers a necessary initial exploration into the content of supervisor transgressions. Findings open new areas for continued research exploration into the nature and functioning of supervisor transgressions.

Practitioners also stand to benefit from this work, as this identification of supervisor transgression themes affords organizations knowledge about how to best target supervisory interventions.

Though researchers have just begun to examine the nature of leader transgressions, they have yet to analyze the content of supervisor transgressions. This study offers an original investigation into how supervisors transgress against subordinates at work.