The Damage of Consumer Brand Sabotage: How It Affects Other Consumers Depending on Their Brand-Relationship

Only recently, research has identified and conceptualized the new phenomenon of consumer brand sabotage where consumers have the dominant motive to harm a brand. Despite its high damage potential, the process by which CBS affects other consumers and damages the brand has not yet been examined. Furthermore, prior research has found a buffering and love-becomes-hate effect of consumer-brand relationship quality on the effects of negative information about a brand on consumers’ behaviors. Therefore, we examine how exposure to a CBS activity affects consumers’ attitude towards the brand and subsequent behavior (purchase intention and NWOM), whether motives such as perceived betrayal and social identity threat mediate this effect and to what degree this effect depends on the consumer-brand relationship quality. Our conceptualization is based on theories from social psychology such as interpersonal betrayal and social identity theory and preliminary empirical support is found from an online-experiment with 186 participants who were confronted with an actual CBS activity. Important implications for further research and marketing practice are discussed.