ABSTRACT
Nowadays, supply exceeds demand rendering consumers the opportunity to select, buy and consume brands that equals their personalities. Owing to the fact that several offerings are available in the market, consumers tend to reject some brands. Whereas most prevailing studies are geared towards building robust consumer-brand relationships and nurturing brand loyalty, the area of brand avoidance has received little attention. Furthermore, it is argued that brand emotions act as mediators between brand stimuli and consumer behaviour. However, it is unclear how negative brand emotions impact brand avoidance. This study therefore determined the drivers of brand avoidance among Ghanaian service consumers; and examined the mediating role of brand hate in the relationship between brand avoidance and its drivers. To investigate this, a large-scale quantitative study with a sample size of 318 respondents within the Greater Accra metropolis was conducted. The data was analysed using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) in AMOS. The findings of the study revealed that, out of five proposed drivers, three drivers – unmet expectations, symbolic incongruence and unacceptable trade-offs – are shown to influence the avoidance of brands. Failed communications was shown to have an inverse significance on brand avoidance. Furthermore, the three validated drivers, including failed communications, are partially mediated by brand hate. Ideological incompatibility had a non-significant effect on brand avoidance. Managers must ensure that they prevent the drivers of brand avoidance from occurring to avoid negative consumer-brand relationships. Further studies may want to investigate into more detail the three drivers confirmed to influence brand avoidance among Ghanaian service consumers using an inductive approach.
CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
Chapter Overview
This section presents the background to the research. It addresses the need for brand avoidance among Ghanaian service consumers, problem statement and gaps, purpose of the study, research objectives, research questions, significance of the study and chapter disposition.
Background of the Study
Globally, service branding plays an exceptional role in marketing activities of service organisations (Berry, 2000; De Chernatony, 2010). In a services marketing setting, influential service brands convey their beliefs across each spot of connection they have with the customer (Underwood, Bond, & Baer, 2001). According to Pinar Girard, Trapp and Esser (2016), one of the main obstacles in branding services is the dissimilarity amid the consumers’ opinion of brand reflections and the firm’s branding attempts, which could result in experience gaps.
The choices consumers’ make as far as brands are concerned usually depends on a whole lot of positive factors that these brands represent. Consumers, by the brands they consume, define themselves (Banister & Hogg, 2004) or even respond to their individual identities (Cherrier, 2009; Kitchen & Burgmann, 2015). Furthermore, according to Martin and Morich (2011), customers are becoming more aware, and each purchase decision signifies a conscious choice, which has effects outside the consumption of a good or service. Additionally, Rumbo (2002) argue that the multiplication of competing brands and advertising “clutter” implies that it is likely clients may perceive multiple brands as alike
(Ehrenberg, Barnard & Scriven, 1997). Therefore, customer loyalty to a particular brand is hard to create and envisage (Pappu, Quester, & Cooksey, 2005). According to Abougomaah, Schlacter and Gaidis (1987), this multi-brand loyalty implies that any brand included in a consumer’s evoked set of options may be chosen with respect to the situation at hand.
However, consumers may regularly decide to reject specific brands, resulting in what Lee, Motion and Conroy (2009a) refer to as “anti-consumption”, a scenario where consumers may circumvent a product or brand (Lee et al., 2009a). Furthermore, Lee et al. (2009a) claim that anti-consumers may also deliberately reject a brand even when it is available and affordable, termed as “brand avoidance”. So practically, although it is crucial to belong to the set of selected brands, it is also crucial to not belong to the rejected brands group.
Unfortunately, studies pertaining to the reasons consumers avoid some brands are scarce or barely elucidated (Dalli, Romanni & Gistri, 2006). This breach is reasonable since firms and institutions are concerned about the favourable reactions toward their brands. They are engrossed in knowing the desires of consumers and what they are willing to purchase (Dalli et al., 2006). Nonetheless, understanding why consumers might avoid a brand might help in developing strategies in countering anti-consumption behaviours (Khan & Lee, 2014). As Hogg (1998, p.133) posits: “The creation of meaning via consumption involves both positive and negative choices”.
In addition, marketers strive to make emotional connections with their customers through their brands (Smith, Fisher & Cole, 2007). As a result, firms gain some amount of benefit via positive emotions in the form of reduced marketing budgets and price insensitivity, which provide the organisation with a significant competitive advantage (Demirbag-Kaplan,
Yildirim .Gulden & Aktanet, 2015). Therefore, the favourable sentiments regarding brands are enormous and well recognized (Zarantonello, Romani, Grappi, & Bagozzi, 2016). Particularly, most studies concerning emotions towards brands have looked at brand love (Batra, Ahuvia, & Bagozzi, 2012; Rossiter, 2012), brand attachment (Dolbec & Chebat, 2013), etc. Nonetheless, just a few of them considered the unfavourable emotions directed at brands (Fournier & Alvarez, 2013). Consequently, in relation to Romani et al. (2012), researchers are beginning to discover the unfavourable emotions consumers may harbour concerning brands, particularly “brand hate” (Zarantonello et al., 2016; Grégorie, Tripp, & Legoux, 2009). As Rempel and Burris (2005) argues, “hate” is recognised as an intense and significant human emotion that may bring about a disposition to injure. In fact, according to Fehr and Rusell (1984), hate was the next most crucial sentiment. Furthermore, research (Gregoire et al., 2009; Johnson et al., 2011) in marketing has revealed how consumers cultivate “hate” sentiments when they encounter incidents of service disappointment. These emotions bring about unfavourable repercussions for the brand and the firm, precisely resulting in the rejection of the brand or speaking negatively about it (Zorantonello et al., 2016). Therefore, according to Bryson, Atwal, and Hultén (2013), hate may be interpreted as the strong negative emotional element of attitude towards a brand.
However, even though it is known that consumers’ unwanted behaviour is elicited by experienced unfavourable sentiments (Romani et al., 2009), it is not clear how negative emotions lead to brand avoidance. This thesis, therefore, seeks to determine the influence of brand hate on the association between brand avoidance and its drivers.
Problem Statement
A lot of marketing managers and academics till now have concentrated on the desirable facets of branding and brand equity. However, customers turn-down particular brands to prevent adding negative connotation to their lives (Lee et al., 2009). In fact, consumers are more expressive about their distaste and dislikes when compared to their preferences (Wilk, 1997). Yet, interest in anti-consumption is still emergent (Bryson et al., 2013), specifically brand avoidance (Lee et al., 2009). Besides, in the field of symbolic consumption, research has proposed that knowledge on what consumers do not like is equally appreciated as the knowledge of what they like (Banister & Hogg, 2004; Ogilvie, 1987), consequently, highlighting the need to study brand avoidance as a topic (Knittel, Beurer, & Burndt, 2016), especially for service businesses. Knittel et al. (2016) posits that it is imperative for service organisations to comprehend brand avoidance from the services perspective since an organisations status and benefit can be affected by its (brand avoidance) outcomes. Similarly, Khan and Lee (2014) proposed that brand avoidance should be studied in the service sector.
Furthermore, as stated by some authors (Aaker, 1996; Rumbo, 2002), years upon years of brand multiplication and advertising jumble has brought about a decrease of real brand devotion, possibly causing consumers to swap brands. A brand that encounters continuous periods of brand avoidance could suffer negative brand equity, as consumers reliably respond negatively to the brand (Aaker, 1996; Keller, 1993). Therefore, in a competitive industry like the service industry in Ghana, there is the need for studies on brand avoidance to enable managers to make informed decisions on creating the right meanings for their brands.
