I don’t really hate it any more than I hate any of the other brands I hate, but sure, I hate Dell as much as the rest.
Anonymous Consumer
There is a substantial increase in consumer hateful behaviors targeting well-known corporate brands because of increasing pace of digitalization of consumer markets. In today’s digital markets, no brand can escape from consumer criticism and can be immune to consumer negativity . Part of the reason is that the Internet makes so easy to publicly complain, and such consumer criticism, negativity, and complaints can easily reach millions of consumers simultaneously. As consumers can “anonymously” communicate with markets, that makes them to show their true feelings without revealing their true identities. In physical face-to-face shopping environments, majority of consumers prefer to pressure or hide their true emotions but let them lose to their close friends and family such feelings once they leave physical shopping environments. Thus, it was almost impossible to detect the consumer’s true emotions during and even in post-purchase stages as they intended to share their experiences with only the people who are close to them. As a result of such anonymous and non-face-to-face communication technologies introduced by the Internet, consumers now channel their true feelings especially hateful criticism into the markets without worrying about revealing their identities as well as not worrying whom they are directing their hate to as there is no real face to talk to. It is like writing your diary without hiding your true emotions, without worrying about who to hurt. Open your heart and soul truly as it is. Thus, consumers reveal even their most hideous and hateful feelings that have been pressured for a long time. Such negative speech we witness in consumption spaces is reaching unpresented levels, and the brand hate concept is sitting right at the heart of this change.
Hate in psychology literature is generally discussed in terms of interpersonal relationships. However, people can also feel hate toward objects that represent systems of meaning to which they are opposed. Thus, hatred for a person or “interpersonal hate ” and hatred for an object or “object hate ” can be different. Research has found that about a third of student respondents associate their hate with “something” rather than “someone” (e.g., I hate McDonald’s). 1 This kind of hate , or “object hate ”, is not studied and discussed in either consumer psychology and behavior theories or in general psychology. It is not clear whether people ascribe more valence to actions against persons or objects they hate . However, research shows that people interact with brands like their friends, enemies, and acquaintances, and they share with them their feelings and emotions in different forms—attributing human characteristics to the brands. 2 On the other hand, there is no research into whether people’s interpersonal hate can get more severe than object hate or vice versa. Also, every consumer attaches different emotions to different brands, and different emotions can be triggered when we see different brands. You feel happiness when you see one specific brand, while you feel hate and anger when you see another brand. Brand hate , in this context, is not studied as widely as brand love in both consumer behavior and psychology literatures. In other words, brand hate is a relatively new concept and needs to be discussed in depth in the next section in light of the previous examination of the psychology of hate .
Definition of Brand Hate
When brand hate is pronounced in any conversation or discussion, the first thing people think is that brand hate should be a polarized version of brand love . In short, it is thought that it is total opposite of brand love. This is not true all the time, as brand hate does not necessarily indicate lack of brand love but can just mean indifference . 3 Thus, people who do not feel love toward a brand do not necessarily feel hatred toward it but just feel neutral or show a lack of interest or simply are indifferent. This feeling of numbness is not actually an indication of something bad and traumatic. There are layers of different negative emotions that are seeded into brand hate feeling. In other words, there is more into brand hate than just not feeling love toward a brand. Yet, brand love as a concept is a good starting point to really understand what brand hate can be.
There are many examples in branding and consumer psychology literature of consumers developing strong positive emotions toward brands, such as feeling loyalty to or love for a brand. Clearly, consumers can also develop negatively intense emotions against brands. In general, when people feel positive about a person and an object, they develop “approach” behavior, and they try to get close, but they develop “avoidance ” behavior when they feel negative about a person or object. 4 From the branding point of view, consumers develop “brand attachment ” when they feel positive about a brand and develop “brand aversion ” when they feel negative (aka “Attachment-Aversion” model). 5 Such negative brand experiences received less attention from both academics and practitioners until we started to witness consumer hostility toward hated brands in many online consumer networking sites, in reviews, and on complaint boards. Today, it is almost impossible to read online consumer reviews without running into hateful language about companies, employees, and their brands. Consumers are now able easily to reveal their true emotions since most of interactions can be anonymous in digitally mediated communication platforms. As a result, passive and hidden negative emotions can now be actively observed in the digital world because of the open and anonymous nature of Internet communication. Thus, research recently has started to focus on the dark side of the consumer–brand relationship, and new negative consumer–brand relationship concepts are developed, such as brand dislike , 6 brand avoidance, 7 negative brand emotions, 8 brand divorce , 9 and anti-branding . 10 Such negative consumer–brand relationships can influence consumers deeply and memorably—in ways that can harm a company’s brand equity more than actually expected as such negativity spread in the digital world with a heartbeat. In fact, some authors believe that managing negative brand experiences is more important than building positive brand connections, especially in brand equity building processes. 11 Similarly, in my research, I also found that there is a link between consumer-generated anti-branding activities targeting well-known brands and brand value . This, in turn, suggests that negative brand associations might be playing a more active role than positive ones, and thus the development of a valid and structured conception of brand hate is a necessity.
Most of the brand hate feelings track back to consumers perception of unfairness and injustice as discussed in the previous chapter. The difference between consumer’s perception of what is fair and what is not with their interactions with the brand and company reveals where the brand hate is seeded. Consumers naturally expect to receive fair outcome when they are interacting with brands. Any behavior creates poor outcome and/or low-quality relationship between brand and consumers lead the way to hate in consumption places. Consumers’ perceived injustice increases specifically if the brand can’t deliver the promised or expected value by performing poorly (aka distributive injustice 12 ), or if the brand proposes unfair policies such as unfair product return policies (aka procedural injustice 13 ), or if the brand treats consumer disrespectfully in ways that contradicts itself with previously established norms (aka interactional injustice 14 ). If such consumption injustices cannot be fixed by the company in a timely and an expected manner, consumer frustration can quickly turn into passionate negative emotions and hatred toward the brand, as broadly discussed with regard to interpersonal hate in psychology of hate literature in the previous chapter.
Brand justice/injustice and hate
Thus, consumers’ perception of the ratio of brand offerings to consumer expectations sits at the heart of consumer brand hate concept. Every brand is a commercial entity and has something to offer. Brand offerings can either be physical such as product itself or psychological and/or emotional such as identity , feeling of belonging to a group, as support to a social cause. Every brand has also liability to carry and deliver such brand assets to satisfy its consumers’ needs. Positive consumer–brand relationship can only be established if the brand delivers the promised offerings to consumers or goes beyond the expectations. This, in turn, leads to brand love if the brand constantly accomplishes to provide promised offerings to consumer. If such promised offerings can fall short, consumers eventually feel aversion and try to distance themselves from the brand. This is where a brand hate can initially be formed as also discussed in Attachment-Aversion 15 models in consumer psychology literature. Consumers’ feelings of justice and fairness can be shattered when brand offerings can’t be met or exceed the perceived liabilities. In other word, consumers’ perceived distributive, procedural, and interactional justice feelings determine either brand is going to be loved or hated. In the brand love –hate continuum, brand justice, which covers all the aforementioned justice elements discussed, sits in the middle of brand love and hate as pictured in Fig. 2.1. Every brand and consumer want to be just each other in a simple consumer–brand relationship. In this context, brand injustice is the turning point from where brand hate starts and continues to grow with increasing volumes if brand can’t manage to balance the offerings-expectations equity by recovering injustice elements. Each injustice element (distributive, procedural, and interactional justice) works differently in creating brand hate . Depending on product, service, or situation, consumers might tolerate a specific injustice element with various capacities over others. The research found that consumers might tolerate distributive injustice when there is a strong relationship between company/brand and the consumer. 16 This is true in many cases. For example, I don’t mind getting a bad coffee once in a while from my favorite café place as baristas were always really nice to me, and we develop good friendship over the years. Nevertheless, the opposite could also be true. Seinfeld fans could easily remember the famous “Soup Nazi” episode in which the Soup Nazi (the soup maker and the business owner) who cooks very delicious soup that almost everybody can’t help themselves but go taste those addictively delicious soups. Everybody behaves themselves and quietly wait on the line and show utmost respect to Soup Nazi so that they don’t get eliminated from the line and future services provided by this amazing cook. But, Soup Nazi is a very angry man, and he can treat his consumers very badly and refuse to serve them soup, which is hard to handle for most of the consumers. I still can hear him saying “no soup for you, one moth” when Jerry slap his counter by getting ahead of the line and asked a soup. Clearly, this is a comedy, but there is some reality behind it, and some readers can find similar examples from their lives. Thus, sometimes consumers can tolerate such procedural and interactional injustice aspects as long as they get distributive justice. In other words, each injustice element can hurt consumer–brand relationship in different ways and kindle hateful feelings in different forms. However, in each individual justice element is not satisfied, the brand gets closer to be hated more and more. If more than one injustice elements can’t be satisfied (say both distributive and procedural injustice), or all of the injustice elements can’t be served, then consumers might finally feel real hate toward the brand.
Overall, it can be said that brand hate indicates consumers’ negativity toward a brand, its associations, and its identity as a result of consumer’s perceived brand injustice with the relationship with the brand. Any consumer-brand interaction which gives consumers bad and painful experiences in both physical and emotional levels potentially lead to the way to the brand hate . In a broader sense, brand hate can be defined as consumer detachment and aversion from a brand and its value systems as a result of constantly happening brand injustices that leads to intense and deeply held negative consumer emotions. Such negative emotions can vary from simple devaluation and diminution to disgust and contempt to anger similarly discussed in Stenberg’s hate conceptualization. In other words, brand hate is more than just one emotion and covers various layers of different negative emotions. These emotions play different roles in forming brand hate , and such emotions will be discussed in detail, and the following section is dedicated to that.
Components of Brand Hate
Because hate is theoretically a very complex and multilayered concept, we need a broader brand hate construct. This is possible by translating Stenberg’s hate conceptualization in the previous chapter into the consumer–brand relationship context. Sternberg’s conceptualization offers a broader understanding of the concept and goes beyond just revealing anger and death wishes toward the hated sides or objects. Therefore, I will use it as a springboard for a brand hate conceptualization and will define brand hate in three major constructs as follows: cold brand hate , cool brand hate , and finally hot brand hate . These brand hate constructs will be discussed with the equivalent and related theories in consumer psychology literature.
Cold Brand Hate
Cold brand hate can be conceptualized as devaluing the hated brand and eliminating any sort of relationships with it, thus ignoring and leaving the hated brand behind. Cold brand hate can be characterized as seeing the targeted brand as worthless. The hater tries to distance himself/herself from the hated brand, its associations, and followers. Thus, in cold brand hate consumers try to lessen the importance of the brand in their lives. This devaluation process is where consumers start disconnecting slowly and coldly from what the hated brand represents. This separation and effort of dissociation from the hated brand is a less costly approach to avoiding the potential harms from the hated side as perceived danger is minimal 17 and perhaps gives more meaningful resolution to the consumers. Such diminution and devaluation processes are widely discussed in the context of the consumer self and brand identity relationship in consumer behavior and psychology literatures.
As the brand is a useful and convenient tool for the expression of one’s beliefs, values, and personal style, devaluing and avoiding unwanted brand images and associations that do not fit consumers’ self-concept can be seen as an indicator of a passive form of hate expression . Cold brand hate consumers prefer to avoid the brand, as discussed in “identity avoidance ”, which is due to a mismatch of the consumer’s self-identity and the brand identity. 18 As a result, consumers can also develop negative selves as opposites to their positive self in the consumption arena. In general, consumers are able explicitly to share their negative feelings with society by developing distinct negative selves and negative identities which polarize them from the hated brand. In other words, a consumer’s negative self can also reveal what is the person’s positive or ideal self. It can also be claimed that negative and positive selves are complementary and validate each other. However, negative selves could be more intense, powerful, and predictable social indicators than positive selves. 19 Similarly, research shows that dissociated reference groups might play a more significant role in consumer self and brand identification processes than positive brand associations. 20 Likewise, brand aversion studies focus on comparisons of enticing versus annoying consumer selves and enabling versus disabling consumer selves, scrutinizing these constructs to reveal the silent war between consumers’ positive and negative selves . 21 If negative selves play a predominant role in consumers’ personal lives, an adverse attitude, a cold or silent hate , and most likely a strong avoidance of the disliked brand can be witnessed. One could pretend that a consumer’s positive self could manipulate itself in brand love while negative selves work on brand hate . 22 In this kind of brand hate , inculcation of the brand as criminal or socially irresponsible could also be the purpose of the brand haters . Cold brand hate , in this context, can be seen as the representation of consumer negative selves which eventually manifest as hate toward the brand that does not fit with the consumer’s individual and social identification needs. 23 Although it is not a deep, core or extreme feeling, such dissociation and/or avoidance efforts by the person defining himself/herself as different to the disliked brands, can be seen as early indicator of a slowly evolving brand hate .
Cool Brand Hate
Cool brand hate refers to consumer negative emotions such as repulsion, resentment , revolt , and finally disgust toward a disliked brand. The feelings discussed in cool brand hate are stronger than just trying to distance a person’s stand on an issue, but entail rather a total dislike , unhappiness, and a strong dissatisfaction created by the brand. These feelings do eventually lead to distinct distancing efforts by drawing clear lines between the brand and its associations and the consumer. Distancing is the early stages of the feeling of disgust. In fact, a person who feels disgust may create a vociferous stand against the hurtful and hated side. Thus, the distancing discussed here is a kind of escape and different to what is defined in the cold brand hate section. It indicates something more like an “escape” from the disgusting person/group/object by voicing displeasure loudly. People perceive threats at a higher level and feel themselves to be challenged with the high costs of avoiding the harm implied by disgust . 24 Thus, emotions are stronger, and behaviors are sharper in cool brand hate , as disgust includes a more expressive outcry and escape , rather than just a silent distancing from the hated brand . 25
Although in consumer psychology literature disgust is usually studied in terms of a physical feeling because of dirtiness of products or services, the feeling of disgust can also represent “moral disgust”. 26 Moral disgust in the world of consumption is a result of the company’s selfish effort to put company and brand benefit over consumer benefits. Cool brand haters are so disgusted by the company and brand that they exit the market 27 by boycotting the brand 28 and thus liberate themselves from meaningless consumption circles, as discussed in “consumer liberation and escape ” 29 concepts. Some research indicates that not providing an exit option from brand consumption cycles, which is the case in many oligopolistic and monopoly markets (aka “held hostage” due to high switching costs 30 ) might trigger a brand disgust especially this accompanied with distributive injustice . Some also may change their consumption patterns as a result of brand disgust by creating their own solutions, conceptualized as “sovereign consumers ”. 31 In cool brand hate level, consumers might feel threats at a higher level than cold brand hate and accept high costs for avoiding the harm in disgust. 32 The emotions are stronger as disgust includes a more expressive outcry and “get away” feeling than silent distancing and self-devaluation .
Hot Brand Hate
Feelings of extreme anger and anxiety toward a brand are represented in hot brand hate . Thus, revealing extreme anger and aggressive responses targeting hated brands is its focus. In general, angry people have higher willingness to take greater levels of risks to lower the potential harm expected from the hated side, and therefore they can easily get violent and attack it. 33 Angry consumers are relatively new to the consumer research area, but there is increasing interest in studying angry consumers’ behaviors. When some consumers feel helplessness and frustration , this, in turn, might lead to very extreme and in fact explosive reactions toward the hated brand. This can be seen particularly after a major service failure , 34 or sometimes socially irresponsible corporate actions raise consumers’ willingness to punish such brands. 35 Consumers can reflect their anger onto frontline service providers, and they may try directly to harm company property and deliberately attack employees, violating the company’s policies. 36 Feelings of being cheated by the company, or feeling being taken advantage of or stuck with an unwanted contract or something unexplained could eventually push the consumer to the edge. The things done by the company are so absurd that you simply shoot through the roof, lose control, and get violent. Consumers’ dissatisfaction with services or a company’s stand on a social issue could also be associated with a greater likelihood of active anti-branding activity and extreme brand hate in such cases. Although a betrayed and helpless feeling increases angry consumers’ desire for revenge and willingness to hurt the company, 37 anger as an emotion has more momentary magnitude and might last in a shorter duration. 38 In hot brand hate , consumers could be actively engaged in some disruptive behaviors, which even can be perceived as anarchistic .
Types of Brand Hate
- 1.
Attitudinal Brand Hate (combination of cold and cool brand hate ): This kind of brand hate indicates only a negative emotional attachment. Consumers might share these feelings with their close friends and family or sometimes keep their emotions private. They can passively differentiate their stand against the hated brand by distancing themselves and informing fellow consumers about it.
- 2.
Behavioral Brand Hate (hot brand hate ): Expressing negative emotions, antipathy , and hate loudly toward a brand in public. Such behavioral indications can be formed by owning a brand hate site, involvement in hate group discussions, posting complaints on third-party complaint sites about the brand, or simply being an anti-brand activist .
Brand hate hierarchy
Clearly, the most dangerous and harmful form of brand hate is “burning brand hate ”. Most of the attitudinal brand hate construct can sometimes be difficult for a company to detect; behavioral brand hate measures are not only stronger indicators of losing consumers but also a sign that attacking behaviors, in the form of anti-brand activity, is about to happen. Each brand hate construct has the potential to fire up some level of anti-branding activity targeted at hated brands.
Brand Hate and Anti-Branding
When a consumer decides to end their relationship with a brand and there is a strong consumer dislike toward the brand, this, in turn, increases the consumer’s likelihood to become involved in anti-branding behaviors targeting that brand. 39 The stronger the consumer’s previous relationship with the brand, the harsher, and tougher the criticism from them may be, and the consumer’s willingness to engage in anti-branding activities may be increased. 40
Most anti-branding efforts in the digital world start with using domain names similar to corporate counterparts. Many such anti-brand domain names are easy to remember (such as northworstair.org for Northwest Airlines, shameway.com for Safeway’s, starbucked.com for Starbucks, killercoke.org for Coca-Cola, and so forth). Anti-brand sites purposefully use the targeted corporation’s brand name in their domain name to increase their visibility and the findability of their version of brand meanings in digital markets. Such haters also purposely embed insulting and negative words in their domain names so as to express their anger and frustration while entertaining and educating consumers and audiences. In an attempt to prevent the creation of such anti-corporation and anti-brand Web sites, some companies have purchased the addresses of potential negative brand Web sites—for example, Volvo’s volvosucks.com, Chase Manhattan’s chasesucks.com, ihatechase.com, and Exxon’s exxonsucks.com. 41 Famously, priceline.com purchased pricelinesucks.com even before priceline.com went online. 42 In some industries, many of the leading brands seem to have anti-brand sites. With these domain names , anti-brand sites also benefit by sharing the link popularity, brand awareness, and Web traffic of the targeted brands’ site in many search engine results and in consumer surfing decisions on the Internet. Anti-brand sites sometimes show up in the top ten search results when a corporate brand is searched on major search engines. Other sites also take advantage of mistyping (aka “typosquatting”) to steal traffic directed to the targeted brand, as in the case of untied.com, a hate site targeting United Airlines (united.com). For these consumer haters , anti-brand sites have turned out to be major message dissemination venues and a powerful communication tool. Such anti-branding hate sites subvert many brand slogans , associations, and meanings by introducing new semiotic meanings on their Web sites (aka “subvertisement”). Consumer -generated anti-branding images are also conceptualized as “doppelganger brand images” in theoretical discourse. 43 Anti-branders try to undermine the perceived authenticity of the original corporate brand meanings and slogans and eventually expose the firms to cultural backlash in consumption spaces. Although doppelganger brand images incite critics of corporate brand meanings, they do not necessarily manifest very extreme negativity and/or reflect deeply held consumer hate toward disliked brands. Thus, doppelganger brand images can be seen as subsections of general anti-branding activities and expressions of brand hate .
Brand hate and anti-branding
Not all haters feel brand hate at the same level. As discussed above, the lowest level of brand hate in the brand hate hierarchy comprises cold brand hate , while the highest level of brand hate is burning brand hate . Thus, it is reasonable to expect the lowest level of anti-branding activities in cold brand hate while the highest level of anti-branding activities will appear in burning brand, as also pictured in Fig. 2.3. In psychology literature, individuals who feel low-level hate are defined as “faint-hearted haters ” while higher-level haters can be described as “wholehearted haters ”. 45 As discussed in Chapter 1, Faint-hearted haters can sometimes be ashamed that they in fact hate somebody, but this might not be the case in the branding world since the brand as an object has less interactive power to influence consumers and is soulless material when compared to human beings. Thus, this shame is less of a possibility. Such sorts of haters are also defined as “mild” level haters in Sternberg’s classification and thus can be defined as “mild level brand haters” in the brand hate context. Some of these kinds of haters hate brands because they want to show loyalty to their friends or in-groups and perhaps hate these brands on a fashionable basis, as discussed similarly within the “symbolic haters ” concept. 46 In other words, they do not even know why they hate it, but hating a given brand is a commitment to friends and reference groups.
On the other hand, other haters display a higher-level hate . Frankfurt (1971) calls these types of individuals “wholehearted haters ”, who are dedicated to hate the targeted group, object, or person. This type of person in fact feels pride in their hate and defines themselves with it. Similarly, Gaylin (2003) defines these kinds of haters as “true or raw haters ”. Their hate is so deep and strong that such individuals feel targeted hate in every aspect of their daily life. They are simply obsessed with their enemies and build everything around the hate they have made their own. Thus, it is fair to define such obsessed and paranoid haters as “die-hard haters ” or “true-haters”. True haters can be placed in Sternberg’s classification between the medium and severe hate level. If true haters ’ requests are not heard and problems are not resolved by the company, their hate can exponentially increase to the highest levels and lead to extreme consumer emotions and even violations of law and anarchist acts toward the brand. These consumers feel severe hate and at some point might even lose control of themselves momentarily. Thus, I will call these kinds of angry and hateful consumers “anarchist consumers ”, as also indicated in Fig. 2.3.
Such haters can exhibit various types of anti-branding activity depending on the level of hate they feel. In this context, consumer-generated anti-branding responses can be classified into three forms: (1) anti-branding activities focused on “informing” fellow consumers about negatives of the brand, (2) a focus on convincing other consumers to stop buying the hated brand and thus “redirecting the consumption”, and finally, and (3) a focus on directly attacking the hated brand with the purpose of hurting, harming, or destroying it. 47 Initially, every anti-branding activity starts with sharing bad experiences about the disliked brand with family and friends, and other like-minded people. Anti-brand sites are exemplars of what the Internet has to offer in terms of empowering consumers and giving them a voice. By informing their close circles about what is wrong, the consumer actually starts disseminating the ugly truth behind the hated brands to the markets. With the advancement of Internet technology, now consumers can easily broadcast their messages and organize themselves with other like-minded consumers to start using anti-brand Web sites as weapons of empowerment to battle corporate wrongdoing . Although dissemination of negative messages starts at the private or close circles level, it can easily reach the whole market in a short time, especially on the Internet. These kinds of anti-branding activity are generally expected from faint-hearted haters , as also presented in the “audience domain” column in Fig. 2.3. However, some consumers might not be satisfied with these initial anti-branding efforts and wish to go beyond. They go directly to the company with their complaint , asking for explanations and compensation for their inconvenience due to companies’ failing products/services and policies. If consumers do not get a satisfactory response, they change their consumption habits by protesting about the company. Some consumers actively use expressive protests , boycotting , or complaint behaviors in consumption markets. Others might send online petition links to like-minded consumers and get involved in boycott movements. Others build anti-branding Web sites with catchy domain names to exchange information, organize boycotts, and coordinate lawsuits, which thus function beyond the role of ordinary complaint and review sites . Many of these sites also appear in the form of consumer revenge sites (aolsucks.com and starbucked.com). These kinds of dedicated anti-branding efforts can only be expected from true haters who put this fight at the center of their lives.
Finally, some anti-branding activities solely focus on destroying the hated brand and thus develop attacking strategies. Such hate site followers use very extreme language and graphic semiotics against the targeted brand. 48 These attacks are aimed at the brand’s identity and everything it represents, deploying unforgettable and disturbing figures and symbols such as swastikas , skulls , and the like. The complaint and communication domain is on the whole public, and such anti-branding activities focus on scandalous claims and very extreme graphic symbols of negative brand images . Some of these anti-branding activities feature legal attacks with case numbers and other public information. These sorts of direct attacking behavior are typical of anarchist consumers , as discussed above.
Typology of anti-brand sites with regard to the NDJ matrixa
Brand rank | |||
|---|---|---|---|
High | Low | ||
Brand consistency | High | Experts | Symbolic haters |
Low | Complainers | Opportunists | |
We can classify consumer-generated branding efforts into four groups: Experts who target the brands that are consistently ranked well-known brands (ranked at the top); Symbolic Haters who target brands that are consistently ranked at the bottom of the list; Complainers who generally target brands inconsistently ranked at the top of the list; and finally, Opportunists who tend to target brands ranked inconsistently at the bottom of the list. Experts generally have better understanding of markets than many ordinary consumers and are capable of sensing and reading market changes very well (some of them may also have worked in the industry for a while). On the other hand, symbolic haters rely on word-of-mouth and rumors; thus, they focus on the myths behind the targeted brands (e.g., “everybody talks negatively about/hates this brand, so I guess I should hate them too”). Complainers focus more on operational problems, such as service failures , rather than the main philosophical problems behind the brands. Opportunists are generally on the hunt for scandalous news; thus, they are fed by media rather than personal expertise or experience, and they maximize their visibility via search engines and by social networking with other consumers. Thus, opportunists are happy as long as they are noticed and generate some traffic to their Web sites.
Interestingly, when I revisited anti-branding activities for the same brands in a longitudinal study after four years, 49 I found the same NDJ effects and discovered that consumer-generated anti-branding activities had gained significant power and visibility over that period. The results also show that there is a significant and increasing relationship between such consumer-generated anti-branding activities, brand hate , and brand value . Survival rates of these consumer-generated anti-branding sites revealed that most of the complainers ’ and opportunists ’ anti-brand Web sites had gone, but the majority of experts ’ and symbolic haters ’ ones were still around after the four years. Furthermore, the study revealed that there was a clear increase in the number of experts’ and symbolic haters’ anti-branding efforts and sites. In other words, they had gained more power over the intervening years, while complainers and opportunists had lost their search-ranking dramatically. This, in turn, indicates that brand consistency might be one of the major factors behind typical NDJ patterns.
Thus, we can term this new phenomenon as having “horizontal NDJ ” effects. That is, brands consistently listed as valuable generate more hate than ones listed in the top of the value scale. In my research, I realized that experts have deep and strong hatred toward the brand they target. They are actually talented haters . Some of the experts are in fact worked for the company for a while, and they know what is going on inside it; thus, their hatred is real. On the other hand, symbolic haters can be fed with news and rumors by media, social networking sites, and blogs. The technological advancements in social networking and blogging systems also provide fruitful environments for such haters to keep going over years. As a result, anti-branding activities can be seen as indicators of active, behavioral, and expressive hate in consumer markets. Another interesting expressive and behavioral brand hate concept is brand bullying .
Brand Hate and Brand Bullying
I hate fubu because in middle school, one of my bullies always wore fubu. She would make fun of me on a daily basis because I couldn’t afford to buy the types of clothes she could buy. So, from then on, I hated everything FUBU.
Bullying is a sign of having power over someone else and a strong indicator of power imbalance between the bully and the bullied . 50 Such power imbalance as a concept is widely discussed in hate psychology. Some bullies can be really rootless and manipulative so that bullied people can define bullies as a “devil ” or “monster”, which is similar to how many anti-branders and brand haters define the company and brand they hate . 51 Bullying involves regular and repeated humiliation , belittling , and intimidating the bullied , 52 which eventually creates deeply held and strong hatred toward the bullies. In fact, bullies enjoy bullying and do not care about the damage they cause to the bullied person’s emotions and life. Furthermore, bullying always happens in front of some sort of audience, and thus the insult and harassment created by bullies can generate very extreme hate , deeper than the regular direct consumer brand hate discussed here so far.
Brand hate through brand bullying. a Direct consumer brand hate. b Indirect consumer brand hate through bullying
In some cases, the person who is bullied through a brand might not have any idea about the brand used in bullying process. Thus, the consumer hates that brand even though he/she has never used it or had any previous thoughts about it. This is caused just through the play of brand identities in order to hurt somebody emotionally. In many cases, the bullying can be so severe that the bullied person might need clinical help in their life to get over such an illogical hate connection. Sometimes a brand can be at the very heart of this hateful bullying process.
Such brand bullying can reach extreme levels especially in teenagers and adolescences world. Dr. Samil Aledin, my colleague, studied extensively brand bullying’s negative impacts on teenagers. In his work, 53 one of the research participants defined the brand bullying as the worst kind of bullying as there is not much you can do about it unless you are rich and can effort to socially valued and highly expensive brands. Dr. Aledin discovered that some teenagers go serious decision process of what to wear or not to wear in order to avoid becoming a target of bullying in their social environments. We communicate with each other through brands in our social environments. These teenagers are also doing the exact same thing, defining who they are and who they are not by screening others to find their place in life. This is the very subject sits at the hearth of hate studies in psychology, classifying individuals “us vs. them”. If they are not from one of us, then they deserved to be bullied . This, in turn, fires hateful relationship between both sides.
Dr. Aledin indicates that teenagers go through an interrogation process by the potential bully why they didn’t wear the brands accepted by their social group. Dr. Aledin conceptualizes this phenomenon as “brand interrogation ”, a confrontation process in which a teenager explains why he/she doesn’t have a certain branded product that is not appreciated by the peers. If a person can’t pass the brand interrogation process, then he/she is subject to severe bullying and exclusion from the group as a form of brand hate . Many teens are harshly bullied because of their choice of branded outfit they wear. That’s indeed the reflection of bully ’s brand hate to another teenage who pays the price as social intimation and aggression . This selection process can be very painful especially when majority is on the bully’s side. In teenagers’ world, these kinds of inclusion v. exclusion decision from a group can be made daily basis depends on what kind of brand a person can wear. And hence such victimization process can generate a deeper hate toward the brand in the middle of this dispute.
Dr. Aledin underlines the root-causes of this kind of brand bullying as materialism. In this context, he indicates that materialism and branding are enabling teenager groups to gain more power and control of their peers with the acts of interrogation , derogation as well as creating criteria for being included, excluded, or ignored. This, in turn, is the fundamental reason behind the hate or brand hate teenagers feel each other in their social environments. The sad side is, such bullied teenagers will probably carry such emotional scars of social exclusion and bullying experience rest of their life as they will likely feel the same traumatic experiences whenever they see the brand in their social surroundings. Thus, brand hate can be seeded in consumers mind and feelings as early as teenage times and works silently through a person’s preferences and personality over the years without detected by the company and brand who is at the heart of such hate and bullying.
Notes
- 1.
Opotow (2005).
- 2.
Fournier (1998).
- 3.
Wiesel (1986).
- 4.
Chen and Bargh (1999).
- 5.
- 6.
Dalli et al. (2006).
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