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Consequences of Brand Hate: Navigating Consumer Negativity in the Digital World

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Abstract

This chapter discusses consequences of brand hate. It discusses potential consumer responses in light of the consumer complaining, negative Word-of-Mouth (WOM), and consumer boycotting literatures. The changes in consumer responses with the Internet technology and what it means for brand hate is also broadly discussed. The chapter provides classifications about potential consumer responses in both attitudinal and behavioral levels. Potential brand damages and anti-branding and brand hate reflections and their impact on individual and social level consumer behaviors. Finally, the chapter also discusses consumer illegal and unethical behaviors as reflection of their brand hate also discussed with the newly developing literature.
... Over time, such anti-branding efforts can blend into a coherent set of opposing meanings that have serious detrimental effects (Cova & White, 2010;Giesler, 2012;Lund et al., 2019). Disparaging brand messages undermine a brand's perceived authenticity and can result in brand avoidance, negative WOM, brand hate, consumer boycotts, declining sales, and even declining stock prices (Bucher et al., 2017;Davis et al., 2016;Kucuk, 2019a;Morhart et al., 2015;Pruitt & Friedman, 1986). The recent ''meme-stock'' phenomenon, for instance, clearly demonstrates the power of collective user efforts to cause billion-dollar damage (Lipschultz, 2024). ...
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