When Brands (Don’t) Take My Stance: The Ambiguous Effectiveness of Political Brand Communication

Brands increasingly take a stance on political issues, whereas consumers choose to either support brand by buying their products (“buycotting”), or turn away from (“boycotting”) for reasons. While buycotts can be understood as rewarding and cooperative form of mostly individual behavior, boycotts are conflict-oriented collective punishment. Even though research has acknowledged these conceptual differences, studies have failed analyze the difference in absolute effect consumers’ disapproval approval. Moreover, date not identified boundary conditions that might explain variation between willingness boycott buycott. This investigates this different effectiveness conducting two experiments with sets brands, countries. Our results suggest boycotting outweighs buycotting, implying communication is risky strategy. Furthermore, we identify interest category involvement moderators imbalance.