Authenticating brand activism: Negotiating the boundaries of free speech to make a change

Abstract

Activist brands commonly engage in controversies to redefine which opinions and ideas are acceptable to express publicly. We conceptualize this practice as free speech boundary work. How can activist brands negotiate the boundaries of free speech to authenticate their activist positioning? By conducting a comparative case study of 18 activist brands, we identify three controversial strategies—creating monstrous hybrids, challenging the establishment, and demonstrating exemplarity—each of them challenging the boundaries of free speech through a distinct mechanism. The results show that whether these strategies authenticate brands’ activism depends on their ability to communicate brands’ moral competency, defined in terms of moral sensitivity, moral vision, and moral integration. This study contributes to the literature on brand activism by proposing an integrative framework that articulates the mechanisms underlying the reformative power of controversial brand activism. Second, we contribute to the literature on brand activism authentication by introducing a competency‐oriented view that reveals the heterogeneous and multidimensional nature of activism authenticity and expands our conception of the spectrum of moral territories with which activist brands can engage.

Autonomy and control: How political ideology shapes the use of artificial intelligence

“…Yet, contrary to most extant inquiries, we demonstrate that, instead of conservatives manifesting different preferences, their liberal counterparts respond to Grab-and-Go checkouts more favorably, and indicate greater future patronage intent thereof (Madani et al, 2021). In addition, the findings herein hint at the possibility that it might be more beneficial to implement the AI uptake for businesses with a broader liberal (vs. conservative) consumer base (Sibai et al, 2021). Moreover, according to prior work, consumers' political ideology often shares substantial correlations with other ideologies such as power distance belief, fair market ideology, as well as social dominance orientation due to their common ground in the tendency of system justification (Li et al, 2021).…”

Cultural exploitation or cultural Exchange? The roles of perceived group status and others' psychological investment on reactions to consumption of traditional cultural products

“…The present studies raise many questions for future research of interest to marketing academics as well as marketing managers and practitioners, including what happens to brands when they are seen as engaging in cultural exploitation-that is, when brands have low psychological investment in the products they are marketing. Recent research on brand authenticity attests many brands struggle with authenticity and that actions that are perceived as inauthentic damage brand equity (Sibai et al, 2021;Vredenberg et al, 2020).…”

“…The present studies raise many questions for future research of interest to marketing academics as well as marketing managers and practitioners, including what happens to brands when they are seen as engaging in cultural exploitation—that is, when brands have low psychological investment in the products they are marketing. Recent research on brand authenticity attests many brands struggle with authenticity and that actions that are perceived as inauthentic damage brand equity (Sibai et al, 2021; Vredenberg et al, 2020). Recognizing that how consumers make authenticity judgements is complex, Nunes et al (2021) have identified different components of authenticity, including “integrity, or the extent to which a provider is being seen as intrinsically motivated, not acting out of financial interest, and acting in accord with their sincere choices that care for their community of origin” (p. 5).…”

Non-dyadic human–robot interactions and online brand communities

“…There are three basic characteristics of this social phenomenon: (1) It has a consciousness of kind by which the members connect to each other to collectively distinguish themselves from another community, as noted in Sibai et al. ’s (2021) work on brand activism; (2) By elucidating the social dynamics of a community of self-quantifiers— consumers who track themselves with technology such as wearable devices—Charitsis et al .…”