Brand Defence: Consumers’ Word-of-Mouth Behaviour Towards a Loved Brand
The aim of this doctoral research was to ‘critically explore brand love and brand defence in consumer-brand relationships by considering the question: can consumers go beyond positive word-of-mouth, and/or brand advocacy to defend their loved-brands against criticism?’ In achieving the research aim, the study involved exploring, conceptualising, and measuring a novel construct in branding, namely ‘brand defence’ through the empirical study of consumers’ word-of-mouth attributions towards a loved brand. Brand defence has been identified, proposed, and conceptualised as a superior form of consumers’ word-of-mouth behaviour attributed towards their loved brands, when their loved brands are faced with negative word-of-mouth. The conceptualisation of brand defence is developed from two theories: 1. The Fairness Theory of Folger and Cropanzano (1998, 2001), and 2. Social Capital perspective of Equity Theory (Adler, 2001; Adler and Kwon, 2002). Moreover, consumers’ brandfavourable WOM is explored in a hierarchy based on the assumptions of Means-End Theory (Guttman, 1982), which suggests brand defence is a superior WOM behaviour that supersedes brand advocacy and positive-WOM in supporting the brand against negative WOM. Though identifying and conceptualising brand defence, this study investigated the role of brand love in promoting brand-favourable positive word-of-mouth behaviour in response to any negative word-of-mouth about the loved brand. Therefore, this study involved incorporating two important research streams; 1. word-of-mouth, and 2. consumer-brand relationships. In order to extend understanding of the extent and nature of consumers’ brand-favourable word-ofmouth behaviour towards loved-brands, the study conceptualised and categorised the brandfavourable word-of-mouth in form of a hierarchy, building on the assumptions of Means-End Theory (Gutman, 1982; Wansink, 2003). The study assigned brand defence the top vertex of the hierarchy against negative word-of-mouth about a loved brand, followed by brand advocacy, and positive word-of-mouth. Moreover, the study also involved investigating the role of brand trust, brand loyalty, and brand forgiveness in mediating the impact of brand love on brand defence, advocacy, and positive word-of-mouth. In lieu of limited empirical investigation of brand defence, and the proposed doctoral research model, this study involved mixed methods research, spanned over three research phases: Phase-I: Pre-survey qualitative interviews and pre-test survey to develop the measuring scale for brand defence. Phase-II: Main quantitative surveys exploring two product categories: cosmetics and consumerelectronics. The research model was refined through confirmatory factors analysis and the scale validation and research hypotheses including the hierarchy of brand-favourable WOM were tested through structural equation modelling. Phase-III: Post-survey laddering interviews exploring the same product categories as main surveys, to explore consumers’ values behind certain attributions through hierarchical value-maps analysis. This is the first study to use value-maps analysis in consumer-brand relationships and word-of-mouth. The key findings of the research suggest brand defence as the strongest and most prevalent brandfavourable WOM against negative-WOM, which goes beyond brand advocacy and positive wordof- mouth against negative-WOM. Moreover, this study also involved testing the mediating role of brand trust, brand forgiveness, and brand loyalty on the relationship of brand love and the three proposed WOM behaviour. Partial mediation was found for all three constructs for brand defence, depicting a positive impact of all the three relationship constructs on brand defence, along with the direct and mediating influence of brand love. The hierarchical relationships between positive-WOM, brand advocacy and brand defence were also found to be significant. However, the hypotheses concerning positive impact of brand love on positive-WOM were rejected, implying that in cases of negative-WOM incident, consumers tend to defend their loved brand and do not offer any lower intensity WOM behaviour. The qualitative findings concurred with this viewpoint, providing useful insight into the nature, intensity, and intent of consumer-brand relationships and their consequent positive outcomes, especially in brand defence. Overall, this study offers both theoretical and methodological contributions to knowledge by conceptualising and measuring a new branding construct, brand defence. The major theoretical contributions of this research comprise: 1. Conceptualising and categorising brand-favourable WOM in the form of a novel hierarchy; 2. Introducing a new branding construct, ‘brand defence’ by observing, conceptualising, developing, and measuring the construct; 3. recognising and highlighting the importance of consumer-brand relationships, particularly brand love in promoting brand-favourable WOM especially brand defence in managing, counteracting, and venting negative-WOM; 4. Conceptualising the nature of brand love by evaluating existing research on consumer-brand relationships, brand love, para-social love, and interpersonal bi-directional and unreciprocated love. The major methodological contributions of this research include: 1. Developing and implementing a measuring-scale for a new branding construct, brand defence; 2. Exploring and measuring brand forgiveness by adopting an interpersonal forgiveness scale and adapting to the branding context. 3. Measuring the hierarchical relationships between positive-WOM, brand advocacy, and brand defence; 4. Conducting laddering interviews in appreciating the consumers’ value structures in forming consumer-brand relationships (brand love) and their brand-focussed behavioural and psychological consequences. Furthermore, the study also offered practical implications on how managers can mobilise brand defence by fostering consumer-brand relationships, particularly brand love, in cultivating brand defence to potentially mitigate the disruptive effects of negative word-of-mouth, both offline and online.
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