Brand Hate and Non-Repurchase Intention: The Mediator Role of Word-of-Mouth: An Abstract

Abstract

Recently, the negative consumer-brand relations received increasing attention (Davvetas and Diamantopoulos 2017). Although this growing relevance, researchers confirm how this area is still underdeveloped (Fournier and Alvarez 2013). Managerially, these negative feelings toward brands could become extremely dangerous since they are today instantaneously and broadly diffused through the Internet. In this networked scenario, the contents widespread through websites, and social media platforms can easily damage brands’ online reputation by influencing consumers’ perceptions and consequently their purchase decisions (Grégoire et al. 2009). Among these negative feelings, the brand hate concept represents a relatively new concept largely disregarded as a topic of research (Zarantonello et al. 2016). Conceptually, different studies examined the brand hate’s outcomes without simultaneously considering their online and offline nature (Hegner et al. 2017; Johnson et al. 2011). Moreover, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is a scarcity of studies dedicated to a specific target composed by consumers who hate a brand they already used and experienced. Notably, these customers represent the most fearsome brand haters with significant negative impacts on firms and brands’ performances (Kucuk 2015). In this regard, the objectives of the study are three-fold: (i) to analyze the brand hate from the actual customers’ perspective; (ii) to examine the possible relationships between brand hate, offline negative word-of-mouth (NWOM), online complaining, and non-repurchase intention; (iii) to test the possible mediating effects of offline NWOM and online complaining on the relation between brand hate and non-repurchase intention. To reach these objectives, structural equation modeling has been employed on a sample of 408 actual consumers. Findings reveal that brand hate positively influences offline NWOM, online complaining, and non-repurchase intentions. Furthermore, offline NWOM has a strong positive effect on non-repurchase intention, as opposed to online complaining. Results also show that only offline NWOM mediates the effect between brand hate and non-repurchase intention. The study provides several theoretical implications by extending the brand hate analysis in a cross-channel setting (online/offline environment), and by extending the taxonomy of brand hate outcomes, thus including offline NWOM, online complaining and non-repurchase intention in the negative consumer-brand relationships’ framework. The paper also analyzes the relations between non-repurchase intention and both offline NWOM, and online complaining by identifying a significant relation only with offline NWOM. This result can be explained in light of the fact that the context’s nature (online/offline) in which consumers complain about a brand can influence their non-repurchase intention. Managerially, possible strategies, for firms, to monitor consumers’ brand hate, both in the online and offline context, have been proposed.