Discussion of the Initial Scale Development Study

The results from the four studies conducted in the foundation stage of this research provides evidence that Negative Brand Personality traits exist amongst the consumer population, thus authenticating the need to develop a measurement scale to reflect Negative Brand Personality traits.

The Initial Scale Development study consisted of the following four sub studies: Study A - Interviews;

Study B - Content Validity Survey; Study C - Sorting Task; Study D - Content Validity Assessment.

These studies provided the ground work to explore the Negative Brand Personality construct, the antecedents, and the outcome variables to facilitate and optimize the integrity of the new instrument. Together, these four studies summarize the dissonant state between corporate brand communication and consumers’ interpretations. Firstly, the four studies not only refined the Negative Brand Personality items expressed amongst consumers but also reflect the construct definition, which is as follows¹⁷:

A set of characteristics ascribed to a brand by the consumer to reflect emotions that stimulate tension, anxiety or incongruity.

Secondly, the Initial Scale Development studies capture a common set of underlying cognitive factors that are evoked by four antecedent constructs. This suggests that consumers can identify negative brand characteristics associated with brands that are not the opposite of positive traits, as well as identify the causes of the Negative Brand Personality traits and the impact this may have on the outcome variables.

More specifically, Study A explored the item pool for the Negative Brand Personality traits as well as identified the antecedent and outcome variables of Negative Brand Personality. It must be noted at this stage that although the researcher identified four factors to the development of negative brand personality measure, (demonstrated in section 4.3 table 4.2); it was purely on the grounds to assist the researcher in eliminating traits of similar meaning approximation. By no means did four factor solution however, set the priori to traits to the factor solution but instead aided the researcher in cleaning the data through item elimination that are of similar approximation. The items identified by the researcher with similar meaning approximation were cross validated with those items identified by at least 2 of the 3 expert judges. This approach resulted in 19 deleted items, leaving a total of 52 items.

17 Further detail on the construct definition is provided in Chapter 2, Section 2.7

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Study B confirmed that the establishment of Negative Brand Personality traits are indeed negative traits and are not confounded by positive perceptions. Study C assessed whether the traits identified and recognized through group categories are identified by consumers. This was then confirmed through a fixed sorting task to ensure that respondents can identify with established groups identified by respondents from the sorting task. Having established five factors (Egotistical, Boring, Lacking Logic, Critical and Socially Irresponsible) from the sorting task, Study D served to validate the item content of the five established Negative Brand Personality factors. Collectively, the four studies provided a more refined pool of items for the Negative Brand Personality construct in order to increase the validity and reliability of the measure. It is therefore argued that the multi-stage process captured much of the meanings associated with Negative Brand Personality through the identification of factors, antecedents and outcome variables. Each attribute will be discussed in detail in the subsequent sections, which will then facilitate the hypothesis and conceptual framework.

4.8.1 The Five Negative Brand Personality Factors

Five constructs were established form the foundational study, namely: Egotistical, Boring, Lacking Logic, Critical and Socially Irresponsible. The Egotistical factor captures the conflict associated with brand exposure expressed through traits and is therefore defined by the researcher as “A brand that is expressed to reflect the inflated importance of false pride.” Further, the traits associated with the Egotistical factor display the conflict associated with respondents’ social judgment by activating one’s cognitive ego involvement with the brand. The Boring factor captures respondents’ moderate cognitive disassociations with the brand and is defined by the researcher as: “A brand that is expressed to reflect repetitive and tedious practices.” The Socially Irresponsible factor reflects the conflict or dissonant state of consumers’ strongly held moral values expressed in traits to reflect their existential meaning through their perceptions inferred onto the brand. The researcher therefore defines the Socially Irresponsible factor as: “A brand that is expressed to reflect the defiance of good faith practices.” This captures the focused attention on moral brand practices. The Lacking Logic factor captures respondents’ intense cognitive rationale guided by common logic salient to the brand. The Lacking Logic factor is defined by the researcher as: “A brand that is expressed to reflect irrational or disapproved social norms.” From the traits assigned to the Lacking Logic factor, such as

‘weird’ and ‘unstable’, it seems the rationale for this factor lies in respondents’ perceptions of the reliability of their perception in inferring cognitive evaluations of a brand. The Critical factor captures the respondents’ disapproved judgment of the brand, which is defined by the researcher as “A brand that is expressed to reflect cognitive disapproval through the guided belief of jeopardizing the

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worth”. Together, the five factors capture the emotions which stimulate tension, anxiety and incongruity between the individual and the brand. From the exploratory findings, four key antecedents of Negative Brand Personality will be discussed in relation to existing literature in the following section.

4.8.2 Antecedent Constructs

In addressing research aim two - to establish the antecedent and outcome variables of Negative Brand Personality - the findings revealed that a non-matching advertising appeal is likely to conflict with consumers’ brand schema, causing a cognitive strain on consumers’ intuitive processes when trying to assimilate the information with their self-concept. This suggests that the brand symbolism depends on the interrelationship between a brand’s perceived image and the consumers’ perceived self-image. However, the incongruence between the advertisement and the self-concept of an individual increases the dissonant state. Coupling incongruence with cognitive dissonance provides further rationalization of Negative Brand Personality traits. To illustrate this further, if the consumer does not mirror their self-image or desired self with the brand, then the relation is dissonant. As a result, respondents experience tension, guilt arousal (Ghingold, 1981), anxiety and doubt (Menasco and Hawkins, 1978) through the violations of a person’s self-concept or image. Consequently, respondents are likely to generate the feelings of frustration, helplessness and negative effect and so then assign Negative Brand Personality traits to overcome the dissonant state. These negative feelings are then communicated through traits such as Envy, Inferiority and Superficiality. This is in line with the social comparison theory (Festinger, 1954), where consumers negatively perceive gaps between their own reality and a brand with an idealistic brand personality that personifies consumers’ dreams and aspirations.

Other research has found that consumers’ proneness to brand confusion results from the following:

perceived similarity of the product through brand imitations, information overload, and ambiguity in consumers’ tolerance for processing unclear or misleading product information (Walsh, Hennig-Thurau and Mitchell, 2007). Therefore, information overload arises when the information supply, due to its volume, can no longer be processed. Consumers begin to exhibit symptoms of anxiety and frustration due to limited processing capacity and the excessive product offerings from a choice of different brands (Mitchell and Papavassiliou, 1999). An example of this is when consumers are faced with a large number of similar advertisements from many different sources which leads to them becoming incapable of assimilating all the information before the next batch of advertisements

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appears (Walsh and Mitchell, 2005). As a result, the consumer feels mislead due to the overwhelming information cues and consequently inaccurate beliefs about the product attributes.

Confusion, therefore, not only results from similarity in product offerings but also through ambiguous or inadequate information which can be caused by overloading the consumer with too many, overly complex or conflicting marketing activities. Confused consumers are likely to describe episodes of confusion through Negative Brand Personality traits as a way to express their stress and cognitive strain since overload, similarity and ambiguous information results when information exceeds consumers’ processing capability.

Similarly, consumers’ psychological reactions to price unfairness (Campbell, 1999) often leads them to punish the brand by looking at alternative brands (Kahneman, Knetsch and Thaler, 1986a, 1986b), or to attack the brand by assigning a discrepant self-meaning. The psychological reaction to what is perceived as a fair price (Kamen and Toman, 1970; Monroe, 1973) causes skepticism about the original value of goods when heavily discounted or overpriced. Chen, Tsai and Cheung’s (2010) findings show that when consumers perceive greater price unfairness, anger is the strongest negative emotional response compared to disappointment and regret. However, Chen, Tsai and Cheung’s (2010) results further show that when consumers experience negative emotions, such as anger and disappointment, they tend to cope through social interaction or expressions of negative emotive language. Consequently, negative traits are likely to manifest as a response to the unfair prices.

Corporate social irresponsibility underpins consumers’ perception of the brands’ moral values (Du Bhattacharya and Sen, 2007). Hollenbeck and Zinkhan (2010) illustrated the importance of this observation by acknowledging that media reports of brands using child labor may hold consumers back from purchasing a company’s product. This meta-knowledge, whether accurate or not, guides consumers’ perceptions of moral practices by setting examples of corporate wrongdoing (Brown and Dacin, 1997), whether it is Corporate Hypocrisy or exploitation of child labor. Such findings were also demonstrated in consumers’ responses that were unforgiving of the socially irresponsible behavior of a company; as a result, the respondents were evaluating the brand by assigning negative traits based on brand ethics. Significantly, the findings of the four antecedent constructs capture the multidimensionality of consumers’ perceptions of Negative Brand Personality.

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4.8.3 Outcome Variables of Negative Brand Personality

Five key outcome variables were identified from Study A, namely NWOM, Negative Attitude, Detachment, Disloyalty and Dissatisfaction, and will be discussed in relation to Negative Brand Personality in the subsequent section. The five outcome variables together summate the attitudinal constructs which have proven to predict actual behaviors such as (re-)purchasing. Overall, the qualitative data discussed earlier in Section 4.3.6 reflects the internal conflict by maintaining an emotional distance towards brands which, in turn, reduces purchasing behavior. Therefore, the outcome variables revolve around dissolution which happens in terms of attitudinal effects (emotion and cognition) and, consequently, impacts on behavioral changes.