Bettina Nyffenegger

Emotional Brand Attachment and Brand Personality: The Relative Importance of the Actual and the Ideal Self

Creating emotional brand attachment is a key branding issue in todays marketing world. One way to accomplish this is to match the brands personality with the consumers self. A key question, however, is whether the brands personality should match the consumers actual self or the consumers ideal self. On the basis of two empirical studies of 167 brands (evaluated by 1329 and 980 consumers), the authors show that the implications of self-congruence for consumers’ emotional brand attachment are complex and differ by consumers’ product involvement, consumers’ individual difference variables, and the type of self-congruence (fit of the brands personality with the consumers actual self versus with the consumers ideal self). On a general level, actual self-congruence has the greatest impact on emotional brand attachment. Product involvement, self-esteem, and public self-consciousness increase the positive impact of actual self-congruence but decrease the impact of ideal self-congruence on emotional brand attachment. The authors discuss important managerial and academic implications of these findings.

When Hostile Consumers Wreak Havoc on Your Brand: The Phenomenon of Consumer Brand Sabotage

In recent years, companies have been confronted with a new type of negative consumer behavior: consumers who have turned hostile and who are strongly determined to cause damage to the brand. Empowered by new technological possibilities, an individual consumer can now wreak havoc on a brand with relatively little effort. In reflection of this new phenomenon, the authors introduce the concept of consumer brand sabotage (CBS). On the basis of different underlying motives, a conceptual framework distinguishes CBS (a form of hostile aggression: harming the brand as dominant motive) from other forms of negative consumer behavior, such as customer retaliation and negative word of mouth (instrumental aggression: harming a brand is only a means to achieve other objectives, e.g., restoring equity). This framework adapts insights from aggression and appraisal theories as well as qualitative interviews with actual saboteurs to a consumer–brand relationship context in order to develop an improved theoretical understanding of the under-researched phenomenon of CBS. The authors analyze the mental escalation processes of individual consumers toward CBS and develop a road map for future research.

How Should Retailers Deal with Consumer Sabotage of a Manufacturer Brand

In the context of retail branding, the recently identified and conceptualized phenomenon of consumer brand sabotage (CBS) has become highly relevant as CBS does not only harm targeted manufacturer brands but also related retailer brands. Whereas the necessity of a managerial response to CBS seems evident, finding the most effective retailer response appears to be more complex. This article examines potential negative spillover effects from a sabotaged manufacturer brand on the respective retailer. Furthermore, it studies outcomes of different response strategies of retailers and takes important contingency factors (i.e., type of CBS and retailer’s assortment size) and process variables (i.e., fairness perceptions) into account. Based on two large-scale online experiments, this article reveals negative spillover effects from a sabotaged manufacturer brand on the retailer brand and that an adequate response of the retailer (i.e., delisting vs. continuing to carry the brand) can decrease this effect, depending on contingency factors.