Affect‐based nonconscious signaling: When do consumers prefer negative branding?

Abstract

When do consumers prefer negative branding, and why? One pilot study and four experiments, including an Implicit Association Test measuring nonconscious associations between negative words and dominance, converge on the conclusion that male consumers induced into same‐sex competition send energy‐efficient dominance signals to elicit fear and avoidance from competitors and maintain access over territory or resources. As a result of this competitive state, male consumers show a preference for negatively valenced words that can signal threat to rivals and elicit behavioral avoidance (“negative branding”). The preference for negative branding disappears under four conditions: (a) When dominance signaling is not needed because rivals are not physically dominant (smaller and weaker), (b) When visual associations show that the negative brand is no longer a dominance signal, (c) When male consumers are induced to think about masculinity but not dominance, or (d) When the male consumer has a low individual difference desire for intrasexual competition. Together, our findings contribute to the marketing literature by introducing a novel type of signaling (“dominance signaling”) that is distinct from prestige signaling and the conspicuous consumption of luxury goods. Dominance signaling and its influence on consumer product branding (“dominance goods”), as well as implications for evaluative conditioning, are discussed.

Robots should be seen and not heard…sometimes: Anthropomorphism and AI service robot interactions

“…Data were collected using an online survey format, administered via Mechanical Turk's market research facility (MTurk), following the method applied by recent papers reporting online social science experiments (King & Auschaitrakul, 2020; Su et al, 2020). The current study aimed for a sample size of at least 900 people, in keeping with established guidelines for experiments that recommend a minimum of 30 people be attained per sub‐group (Roscoe, 1975), and with the assumption that data cleaning would be necessary, 50 people per sub‐group were sought.…”

Evolutionary psychology in marketing: Deep, debated, but fancier with fieldwork

“…Relatedly, inspection of the dependent variables across the empirical studies in this special issue reveals that all except two ( n = 25; 92.59%) have relied on self‐reported preferences, perceptions, attitudes, intentions, or other similar measures as the principal outcomes. The remaining two studies focused either on hypothetical choice (King & Auschaitrakul, 2021; Study 1) or self‐reported behavior (Borau et al, 2021; Study 5). Evidently, as illustrated in the right‐hand column of Table 1, the number of studies capturing real, observable behavior equals zero (0%).…”

“…King and Auschaitrakul (2021) test under which conditions people may prefer negatively valenced branding, such as Fat Bastard wine and Poison perfume. According to their “dominance signaling”‐account, negative branding should mainly be a male affair, with men choosing and preferring negative branding in competitive situations to elicit fear and avoidance in same‐sex rivals due to a stronger desire to appear dominant in such situations.…”

Prestige and Dominance: How eWOM Differs Between Consumers High in Authentic and Hubristic Pride

“…Prestige-oriented individuals may buy their mates an expensive gift to retain them, while dominance-oriented individuals may derogate their mate or behave violently toward sexual rivals (Conlon, 2019 ). In the field of consumption, previous studies have shown that dominance-oriented male consumers send status signals by consuming large sized products/brands (Panchal and Gill, 2020 ) and a signal threat to rivals and elicit behavioral avoidance by consuming negative branding (King and Auschaitrakul, 2021 ).…”

“…Previous research has demonstrated that authentic pride leads to prestige strategies and hubristic pride leads to dominance strategies (Cheng et al, 2010 ; Tracy et al, 2020 ). Furthermore, the use of different social status pursuit strategies leads to different behaviors (Conlon, 2019 ; Panchal and Gill, 2020 ; Ketterman and Maner, 2021 ; King and Auschaitrakul, 2021 ). In summary, we believe that consumers with a high level of authentic pride should be more inclined to adopt prestige strategies, and then engage in positive eWOM and constructive eWOM, because these are value-cocreation behaviors that can also bring benefits to businesses.…”