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Brand stories are often created around the company’s humble beginnings as an underdog. The authors explore the effects of who is telling the underdog story and thus draw attention to the nature of the brand source by differentiating between family and non-family firms. The authors expect that who is telling the underdog story impacts consumers’ attitude toward the brand in terms of brand authenticity and trustworthiness perceptions.

The authors conducted an online experiment with a 2 × 2 between-subject design and an overall sample size of 314 respondents.

Most importantly, the authors find that the family-firm nature of the brand storyteller significantly impacts the underdog effect. The positive effects of underdog biographies on brand attitude in terms of authenticity and trustworthiness loom significantly larger for family firms compared with non-family firms.

The authors find that the underdog effect is significantly stronger for family firms that tell the underdog story. Managers of family firms with underdog roots should take advantage of this finding by integrating underdog stories into their marketing concepts. The findings of this study show that the communication of a company’s roots can serve as a valuable tool to build and maintain a positive brand image and help to increase purchase intentions, which is particularly true for firms capitalizing on their family nature when telling the underdog story.

The authors combine research on brand stories using the underdog effect with research on the consumer’s perception of family firms, further exploring the role of the brand storyteller in underdog narratives, resulting in important theoretical as well as practical implications.

This study aims to examine how perceptions of the globalness or localness of a brand affect the purchase intentions of consumers through the building of consumer–brand identification (CBI). This paper also explores the moderating effect of brand positioning (underdog vs top dog) on the relationship between perceived brand globalness or localness (PBG or PBL) and purchase intention.

The proposed hypotheses were tested in two experimental studies. Data were collected through a set of structured questionnaires and analyzed using PROCESS modelling and analysis of variance.

The results show that CBI mediates the effect of PBG/PBL on purchase intentions. Moreover, the findings of Study 2 reveal that participants show greater purchase intention for PBL than for PBG in response to underdog positioning. However, in top dog positioning, the difference in purchase intention for PBL compared to PBG is attenuated.

This research investigates how CBI influences purchase intentions of consumers in regards to a brand’s perceived globalness or localness, which adds to the growing body of international branding research. This paper also addresses the effects of interaction between brand localness (globalness) and underdog (top dog) brand positioning on purchase intentions. Finally, this study concludes with a discussion of practical actions that international brand managers can take to enhance the effectiveness of their marketing strategies.

This study aims to examine differences in regret between individuals with high vs low self-esteem that follows from negative appraisals for unsuccessful consumer decisions that are either congruent or not with perceived norms. This study also tested the mediating role of decision responsibility and the ability of psychological repair work in regulating regret.

Hypotheses were tested through four experimental studies using student and international panel samples across different consumer decision scenarios to generalize the findings of the study.

This study shows that high self-esteem individuals regret less a bad decision when it is congruent (normal) than when it is incongruent (abnormal) with the prevalent norms, while lower self-esteem individuals tend to regret equally both normal and abnormal decisions. This study further shows that this effect is driven by internal responsibility attributions. Finally, the results also suggest that high self-esteem people are more efficient than low self-esteem people in regulating regret, but only when the decision is abnormal.

The present research has important contributions to both regret and self-esteem literature. First, this study explored the role of self-esteem on regret, an individual variable that has been studied relatively little in regret literature. Second, this study has shown, consistent with recent findings, that decision congruence with the norms is a more suitable predictor of regret than whether the decision involves action or inaction. Finally, this study showed that stimulating individuals to self-enhance by engaging in psychological repair work led individuals to regulate regret, consistent with regret regulation theory.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between cultural distance and psychological adjustment of expatriates in Nigeria and perceived social supports moderating the relationship.

The study used a cross-sectional survey research design. Data were collected through 236 validly filled questionnaires by expatriates working in different industries in Nigeria. The research variables were measured using appropriate validated scales developed by different experts. Data collected were analyzed using frequency, percentages, mean and standard deviation. Correlation and regression analyses were conducted to establish the relationships among the variables.

The study found that the distance between expatriates’ home and Nigeria on each of the dimensions of cultural values: power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance cultural value, long-term orientation and indulgence negatively influence the psychological adjustment of the expatriates in Nigeria. The study demonstrated that the larger the distance between expatriates’ home and Nigeria's cultural values, the larger the difficulties in the psychological adjustment of expatriates in the country.

This study provides useful insights and a better understanding to both present and future global human resource practitioners, multinational organizations, international institutions and local organizations operating in Nigeria with a global mindset on the cultural profiles of expatriates that are critical to adjust to working, social interactions and living environments in Nigeria.

It provides practical guidance to global human resource practitioners and employers on dimensions of cultural values distance between Nigeria and the home countries of expatriates that should be considered when deciding on, searching for, selecting, recruiting and relocating expatriates to work and live in Nigeria.

This research aims to examine the role of consumers' brand trust and attachment on advocacy intention before and after the occurrence of brand misconduct in retail banking. In addition, the influence of brand attachment on consumers' willingness to switch, advocate for and forgive brands is examined in a post-misconduct scenario.

Data were collected through a self-administered online survey questionnaire. A total of 304 valid and usable responses from Australian participants were analysed using IBM SPSS 27.0.

The findings reveal that brand attachment mediates the positive relationship between trust and advocacy intention. Furthermore, brand attachment (1) dilutes consumers' switching intention and (2) strengthens their willingness to forgive the bank after misconduct.

Results suggest that retail banks should create strong brand attachments with their consumers. In addition to brand trust, brand attachment will generate greater advocacy intention among consumers. Moreover, practitioners in retail banking can leverage brand attachment to mitigate the negative impact of brand misconduct.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to examine the impact of brand attachment on the consumer–bank relationship within the context of brand misconduct. The study is also unique in its analysis of the mediating role of brand attachment between brand trust and advocacy. This research further adds to the current literature by suggesting that strong and positive customer connections to the brand facilitate communication and marketing efforts after brand misconduct and that these are effective in maintaining consumer-bank relationship.

The study draws primarily on social identity theory and conceptualizes perceived brand localness (PBL) as a signal of in-group membership to local consumers and investigates how it affects consumer trust and purchase intentions for foreign brands in developing countries in Asia. In addition, the authors examine boundary conditions for these hypothesized PBL effects.

Using consumer survey data from three countries in Southeast Asia (the Philippines, Vietnam and Myanmar), the authors empirically validate the positive effects of PBL on consumer trust and purchase intentions for foreign brands in developing countries.

The findings support the social identity theory conceptualization of PBL for foreign brands, in which it can create identification-based trust (Tanis and Postmes, 2005) and active ownership through a process of self-stereotyping (van Veelen et al., 2015).

The findings suggest that social identity theory can be a promising theoretical framework for conceptualizing PBL and gaining a deeper insight into its mechanization and how it impacts consumers.

This study aims to investigate the effect of brand transgression severity on different behavioral responses (BRs). In addition, the role of perceived brand betrayal (BB) is examined as a mediator between brand transgression severity and BRs.

A total number of 331 customers of Tehran travel agencies were recruited as the statistical sample. Partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) using SmartPLS 4 software was used to analyze the collected data.

The results showed that the severity of brand transgression significantly affects perceived BB and customer BR, including avoidance and retaliatory behaviors. Moreover, the results showed that perceived BB has a mediating role in the relationship between brand transgression severity and reparatory and retaliatory behaviors.

This study adds to the understanding of consumer behavior by demonstrating how customers react to brand transgression severity through perceived BB.

This review aims to synthesize the brand hate literature and suggest directions for future research on brand hate.

This study adopted an integrative literature review method to synthesize and assess the brand hate literature.

The synthesis showed that social identity theory, disidentification theory and duplex theory are prominently used in brand hate studies, and a larger portion of brand hate research was conducted in Western countries. Further, brand-related, self-congruity, personal factors, information influence and brand community influence are the major types of antecedents of brand hate which can produce soft or hard consequences. Lexicometric analysis showed causes of brand hate, consumers' negative emotional and behavioral outcomes and community anti-brand behavior as key themes of brand hate research.

The synthesis has followed predefined criteria for the inclusion research papers. Thus, the review is limited to articles that fulfilled the criteria for inclusion.

The finding will help marketers, specially brand managers, craft strategies to handle brand hate.

The brand hate literature is still developing and remains incoherent, suggesting that a synthesized review is needed. This study has systematically reviewed and synthesized the brand hate literature to study its development over time and proposes a framework which provides a comprehensive understanding of brand hate.