Brand Hate by S. Umit Kucuk

Author:S. Umit Kucuk
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030003807
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Illegitimate and Unethical Consumer Reactions

Although most of the consumers follow legitimate way of protesting the brand they hate , some others might not be able to control their temper and try to find illegitimate ways to hurt the brand. This kind of brand punishment goes beyond creating social pressure on brand through WOM or economic pressure through boycotts and other forms of anti-consumption movements. Such brand punishment can be harsher as there is less empathy can be felt toward an object (as brand) than person-to-person hate . These brand haters or I should call “brand criminals ” or “brand vandals ” thought that they can emotionally or physically hurt the brand as brands as an object has no feelings, cannot feel pain, and can’t fight back. These brand criminals are different than typical brand attackers or haters mentioned throughout this book as they go beyond all the social and legal norms. These criminal haters are not in a mission of developing instrumental nor expressive protest , but in a personal and vindictive punishment even it means to breaking the law to hurt the brand. 35 Vandalizing everything represented by the brand, or marketplace aggression in a form of physical attacks to service providers and anything represented by the brand is common among these kinds of consumers. This kind of uncontrolled and vicious hate could also be associated with extreme form of “burning brand hate ”. The difference from the severe brand haters , the level of hate is so strong that they don’t think that any social or legal rule can comprehend the pain they feel caused by the brand, and thus the company or brand shouldn’t eventually be left to run away without punishment. In these consumers’ mind, there could be only one solution; hurting the brand, even it means to steal from the company or physically attacking the employees and store features. This is easier than jumping lots of hoops to get their complaints put into company’s consumer service systems queue and not to hear from the company days. These consumers might also carry some passive-aggressive personality traits as they prefer to hurt the brand on their own terms even though they might not feel severe level brand hate .

Recently, shoplifting and return frauds are also included these kinds of illegitimate brand punishment behaviors. A research revealed that consumers are tending to shoplift more from the company they think harmful to the society to punish them. 36 This issue is directly related to corporate social irresponsibility concept which was also discussed as one of the major company-related brand hate antecedents in the previous sections. Thus, in general, one could claim that the higher the brand hate gets the more brand vandalism might also get. Interestingly, the same research showed that brand punishment in unethical means or consumer cheating increase even though the company does not even directly harm the consumer. If a consumer morally justifies the brand’s wrongdoings, the hate he/she feels toward the brand might lead him/her

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