How brand personality and failure-type shape consumer forgiveness
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-09-2017-1563 |
| Pages | 300-315 |
| Date | 11 March 2019 |
| Published date | 11 March 2019 |
| Author | Roseann Viscomi Hassey |
| Subject Matter | Marketing,Product management,Brand management/equity |
How brand personality and failure-type shape
consumer forgiveness
Roseann Viscomi Hassey
Department of Marketing, Lindner College of Business, Univerisity of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Abstract
Purpose –This paper aims to explore the impact of an overlooked variable, brand personality, as a basis for brand forgiveness and recovery
following brand failures.
Design/methodology/approach –Data were collected via three on-line surveys using Amazon Mechanical Turk, including a total of 475
respondents (125, 113 and 237) and using a 2 2 between-subjects factorial design.
Findings –Results show that a brand’s dominant personality (warm vs competent) elicits different expectations regarding brand performance, and
that surprisingly, consumers more readily forgive, rather than censure, brand failures which violate their expectations. Further, this effect exists
independent of the consumer’s relationship with the brand. These findings occur across different brands (both ficti tious and real), manipulations of
brand personality and brand failure-type and indices for brand forgiveness. Results indicate the interactive effect of brand personality and failure-
type was mediated by brand credibility, while consumers’desire to re-evaluate the brand served as a moderator.
Practical implications –This research demonstrates that while brand failures are largely considered from a negative perspective, brand personality
can serve to bolster consumer perceptions of brands post-failure. Further, and separate from strong consumer-brand relationships, brand personality
serves as an important signal for consumer expectations and plays a pivotal role in post-failure forgiveness and behavioral intentions.
Originality/value –This study contributes to the literature by introducing and testing the role brand personality plays, independent of an existing
and strong consumer-brand relationship, in consumer response to brand failure. Further, the mediator of and a moderator for this effect are
identified.
Keywords Consumer behaviour, Failure, Brand evaluation, Forgiveness, Service failure, Brand relationships, Brand personality, Corporate branding,
Judgment and decision making
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Brand failures –or violations of implicit or explicit brand
performance expectations (Cheng et al.,2012;Metts, 1994;
Donovan et al.,2012)–are inevitable and can be
extraordinarily expensive,both psychologically and financially.
The cost of a single brand failure includes distrust,disapproval,
and reduced advocacy, all of which undermine a brand’s
financial performance. (Aaker et al.,2004;Aggarwal, 2004;
Humphreys and Thompson, 2014). Additionally, brand
failures are linked with an array of negative consumer
consequences including decreased purchase intentions (Smith
and Bolton, 1998;Tax et al., 1998),increased brand avoidance
(Grégoire et al., 2018;Grégoire et al.,2009) and extreme
negative word of mouth (Ariely, 2007;Grégoire et al.,2009).
Furthermore, brand failures can be expensive; the US
settlement for Volkswagen’s emissions cheating scandal was a
breathtaking$14.7bn (Randazzo and Specter, 2016).
Interestingly, consumer reactions to brand failures are not
equal and at times can be rather counterintuitive in how they
are perceived by the public. For example, when considering
two historical Apple brand stumbles –one involving human
rights violations and another a glitch in their map and
directions app –one might expect that the former would be
judged as significantly more egregious; however, it was the
latter that dominated the news and social media (Chen, 2012;
Cellan-Jones, 2012). In a similar vein, compare two brand
failures within the same category: Chipotle’s 2015 bout with
the E. coli virus involving only 73 consumers across over 2,100
outlets versus McDonald’s 2015 recall of over one million
chicken nuggets across all of Japan. In terms of negative
repercussions, Chipotle’s stock plunged 32 per cent, while
McDonalds’failure sidesteppedthe main stream news and had
no impact on their stockprice (Gensler, 2016;Lurie, 2015).
In searching to explain these seemingly paradoxical
consumer responses, prior research has focused on strong
consumer-brand relationships and their associated norms
(Aggarwal, 2004;Montgomery et al.,2018). As background,
consumer-brand relationships consist of a “series of related
interdependent actions between parties, where the probable
course of future interactions is significantly different than that
of strangers”(Hinde, 1976). Strong consumer-brand
relationships are associated with a host of positive outcomes
including increased commitment, trust, satisfaction, and
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on
Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/1061-0421.htm
Journal of Product & Brand Management
28/2 (2019) 300–315
© Emerald Publishing Limited [ISSN 1061-0421]
[DOI 10.1108/JPBM-09-2017-1563]
Received 1 September 2017
Revised 21 January 2018
9 September 2018
1 December 2018
Accepted 11 December 2018
300
loyalty (Bagozzi and Dholakia, 2006;Hess and Story, 2005;
Montgomery et al.,2018), as well as more forgiving responses
toward a range of brand failures (Ahluwaliaand Gürhan-Canli,
2000;Chandler and Schwarz, 2010;Cheng et al.,2012). In
Aggarwal’s (2004) seminal piece in this area, he showed that
transgressions violating relationship norms exerted the most
negative impact on brand forgiveness. That is, consumers
struggled to forgive brands that violatedthe norm of the strong
consumer-brandrelationship.
However, strong consumer-brand relationships are
exceedingly rare(Schouten and McAlexander, 1995;Thomson
et al., 2005), whereas brand failures (including minor ones)
occur relatively often over the course of our everyday
consumption experiences.As a result, if consumers only forgive
brands for which they have a strong relationship, then
consumer forgiveness of brands should occur infrequently
despite the pervasivenessof brand failures.
Conversely, the current research considers that consumers
still vary in their levels of forgiveness following brand failures,
and irrespective of a strong relationshipwith the brand. That is,
while strong consumer-brandrelationships have been shown to
impact brand forgiveness, this research proposes brands signal
expectations through other means that, when violated, impact
consumer willingness to forgive. Specifically, this research
defines brand personality using Aaker’s (1997) definition of “a
set of human characteristics associated with a brand”. Given
this construct’s similarity to that of consumer-brand
relationships, it is important to note that a consumer’s
understanding of a brand’s personality does not imply the
existence of a relationship between them, including past
interactions and future expectations based on them. For
instance, a consumer can have an understanding of Nike’s
brand personalitywithout ever using their products.
Specifically, this research argues that a brand’s personality–
defined here using the core brand attributes of warmth or
competence (Aaker et al.,2011;Fournier, 1998;Fournier and
Alvarez, 2011;Kervyn et al., 2012)–serves as a signal for
consumer expectations (Freling and Forbes, 2005), and that
these expectations are violated only by certain types of brand
failures. As a result, these failurescan exert a systematic impact
on consumers’willingness to forgive, independent of whether
any deeper relationship exists between the consumer and the
brand.
2. Conceptual background
2.1 Brand failures
Whether personal inconveniences (flight delays) or global
disturbances (massive consumer product recalls), brands
repeatedly fail us. These brand failures,defined as violations of
implicit or explicit brand performance expectations (Metts,
1994; see also Aaker et al., 2004;Cheng et al., 2012;Donovan
et al., 2012), are both common and unavoidable. Not
surprisingly, these failures play a pivotal role in altering
consumer expectations about –and subsequent judgments
toward –the brand (Aaker et al., 2004;Cheng et al.,2012;
Donovan et al.,2012). For instance, Aaker et al. (2004) showed
that, when an on-line film processing brand lost consumer
photos, the brand was judged to be less reliable and less
trustworthy. Thus, brand failures serve as a meaningful
reference point for consumerre-evaluation of brands.
Given the frequency of these expectation violations, one
might think consumers anticipate brand failures. Yet research
shows the opposite –that consumers believe brands will
consistently meet their expectations (Aaker et al.,2004;Reis
and Knee, 1996;Smith et al.,1999). As such, brand failures
typically takeconsumers by surprise.
However, as noted previously, not all brand missteps are the
same. As such, not all failures exert an equal impact on
consumer brand re-evaluations.For instance, Aggarwal (2004)
demonstrated that the effect of expectancy violations–here, by
violating a strong consumer-brand relationship norm –on
consumer evaluations depended on both the nature of the
consumer-brand relationship and on the nature of the
transgression.Specifically, by delineating between relationships
that are based on self-interest versus those based on shared
interest (i.e. functional versus communal; see Clark and Mils,
1993;Fiske et al., 2007;Judd et al., 2005;Kervyn et al.,2012),
Aggarwal found transgressions that violated a norm of the
relationship were viewed more negatively. Specifically,
communal transgressions were more adverse than functional
transgressions for communal-based relationships, whereas
functional transgressions were more detrimental than
communal transgressions for functional-based relationships.
Furthermore, this negative effect was shown to stem from the
perceived severity of the transgression, as transgressions that
matched the basis of the relationship-type presumablyviolated
a pre-existing relationship norm (e.g. violating a communal
value is more egregious for communal relationships than
violating a functionalvalue).
Aggarwal’s research is critical in that it offers a conceptual
basis for why all brand failures are not held to the same
standard when consumers re-evaluate the brand. Indeed, it
centers on a pre-existing and strong brand relationship
(Aggarwal, 2004;Donovan et al., 2012;Montgomery et al.,
2018;Wan et al.,2011). Yet, as noted, while brands do often
fail on both communal and functional attributes, consumers
rarely hold strong brand relationships (Aaker et al.,2004;Reis
and Knee, 1996;Smith et al.,1999). As such, brand failures
should impact even casual consumerswho know nothing about
the brand, as failures should be viewed as diagnostic of brand
performance (Ein-Gar et al., 2011;Hart et al., 1990;Reis and
Knee, 1996;Smith et al.,1999). Thus, the present research
explored the possibility that brand failures can differentially
influence consumer brand evaluations as a functionof features
inherent to all brands –namely,brand personality.
2.2 Brand personality
Brand personality reflects a set of enduring human
characteristics or traits associated with a brand (Aaker, 1997;
Aaker et al., 2004;Wee, 2004). Research has demonstrated
that consumers find it intuitive to instill brands with human
personality traits such as “friendly”or“capable”(Aaker, 1997;
Fournier, 1998;Freling and Forbes, 2005:Malhotra, 1981;
Plummer, 1985), with examples including FedEx as reliable,
Johnson & Johnson as caring, or Lego as clever. In fact, just as
human personality is argued to consist of several core traits
(Costa and McCrae, 1985),researchers have argued that brand
personality consists of several core dimensions. For instance,
Failure-type shape consumer forgiveness
Roseann Viscomi Hassey
Journal of Product & Brand Management
Volume 28 · Number 2 · 2019 · 300–315
301
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