What Makes Consumer–Brand Relationships Bad? Enlightening Relational Negativity

• Main Authors: Golf-Papez, Maja, Beverland, Michael
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Brands; Consumer behavior; Customer relations; Fournier, Susan; Marketing; Personal relationships
• ISSN: 0098-9258

In the past two decades, a considerable amount of research has been published on the relationships formed between consumers and brands. These studies mostly consider the bright side of brand relationships, with scholars idealizing the marital brand relationship style or any type of strong, easily strengthened or positive relationship (Fournier 2009; Fournier and Alvarez 2013). This focus on positive relationships seems somewhat divorced from reality, since consumer-brand relationships can be "troublesome, irking, unpleasant, aggravating, difficult, and problematic" (Spitzberg and Cupach 2007, 8). In fact, such negative brand relationships are more prevalent (Fournier and Alvarez 2013) and more salient (Baumeister et al. 2001) than positive ones. Although there has been far less research on negative brand relationships than on positive ones, a growing body of literature analyzes the dark side of consumer-brand relationships. Studies have sought to examine, for instance, brand hate (Zarantonello et al. 2016), unliked strong brands (Veloutsou, Chatzipanagiotou, and Christodoulides 2020), and strong relationships that have been transgressed (Aaker, Fournier, and Brasei 2004). In addition, negatively valenced relationships are included in the recent customer-brand relationships model (see Park, Eisingerich, and Park 2013) and consumer-smart object interactions model (Novak and Hoffman 2019). Notwithstanding the insightfulness of all these studies, very little is known about how the diverse forms of consumer-brand relationship (strong or weak, and positive, negative, or neutral) actually become negative. To answer the calls for "a science of negative relationships concerning the negative outcomes, processes, states, and attributes of consumers' relationships with brands" (Fournier and Alvarez 2013, 253) and for an overarching theory that will explain what "causes changes in relationships" (MacInnis and Folkes 2017, 366), we explore the phenomenon of relational negativity. We use the term 'relational negativity' to refer to the negativity (negative attitudes) that arises within or because of consumer-brand relationships. Our specific research questions are: (1) How does relational negativity come about? In other words, what makes relationships, however temporarily, bad? and (2) What does the negativity lead to? To understand the negative aspects of brand relationships, we conducted image-elicitation in-depth interviews with 25 participants. Prior to and during th