Impact of Consumers’ Political Ideology on their Evaluation and Response to Brand Transgressions

Abstract

More so than ever before, brands must wade into troubled political waters to meet their stakeholders’ expectations. However, many such initiatives have received significant consumer backlash in recent years. Hence, marketers, more so than ever, need a deeper understanding than just who, liberals or conservatives, are more likely to be offended by the brand’s actions. In this dissertation, I investigate key differences in motivations that liberals and conservatives have in how they express their frustrations with the transgressing brand, and also what sort of brand actions might trigger such frustrations. In my first essay (chapter 2), I focus on harmful transgressions, particularly moral transgressions committed by brands. I report five studies, including one large-scale dataset, that show that conservative consumers (compared with liberal consumers) are more punishment-focused than education-focused in their response to moral brand transgressions. I demonstrate that this difference in response to transgressions is driven by their beliefs about how transgressions should be disciplined (based on Moral Politics Theory). In my second essay (chapter 3), I focus on benign transgressions and demonstrate, through five studies including a large-scale field experiment and an analysis of consumer tweets, that conservative consumers appreciate and produce aggressive humor (humor that denigrates other individuals or societal groups) more than liberals. I also find that this greater appreciation and production of aggressive humor is driven by conservatives' higher belief in social hierarchies, particularly ones that they dominate (social dominance orientation). I discuss theoretical and managerial implications of my research, including guidelines for marketers on how to engage with morally dissatisfied consumers, and how to avoid triggering such transgressions in the first place.