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When endorsers behave badly: consumer self-expression and negative meaning transfer

When endorsers behave badly: consumer self-expression and negative meaning transfer
When endorsers behave badly: consumer self-expression and negative meaning transfer

How do consumers adjust their public and private self-expression through a brand when an endorser attached to the brand gets involved in a scandal? Building on the theory of meaning transfer and congruity theory, the authors propose and demonstrate that in contrast to the extant literature, negative meaning transfer prevails over the high self-brand congruity barriers that managers attempt to build by employing endorsers to transfer positive meanings to their brands. Using three pre-studies and three experiments involving fictitious and real-life celebrities, the authors demonstrate that the effect of negative meaning transfer on consumers’ self-expression in public and private domain and brand attitude becomes more prominent with increasing self-brand congruity and endorser-self congruity. Additionally, negative meaning transfer becomes more pronounced for a celebrity endorser compared to an expert and a celebrity-expert combined endorser. The findings offer novel implications for endorser selection and meaning transfer for marketing campaigns and brand management. Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/02650487.2021.2016267.

endorsement, endorser-self congruity, Negative meaning transfer, self-brand congruity, self-expression
0265-0487
Breberina, Jovica
302c2548-a3c8-48ce-a78d-17ed2d9cfc35
Shukla, Paurav
d3acd968-350b-40cf-890b-12c2e7aaa49d
Rosendo-Rios, Veronica
f9a656c9-d07c-4500-8a0d-9f0578f359d5
Breberina, Jovica
302c2548-a3c8-48ce-a78d-17ed2d9cfc35
Shukla, Paurav
d3acd968-350b-40cf-890b-12c2e7aaa49d
Rosendo-Rios, Veronica
f9a656c9-d07c-4500-8a0d-9f0578f359d5

Breberina, Jovica, Shukla, Paurav and Rosendo-Rios, Veronica (2021) When endorsers behave badly: consumer self-expression and negative meaning transfer. International Journal of Advertising. (doi:10.1080/02650487.2021.2016267).

Record type: Article

Abstract

How do consumers adjust their public and private self-expression through a brand when an endorser attached to the brand gets involved in a scandal? Building on the theory of meaning transfer and congruity theory, the authors propose and demonstrate that in contrast to the extant literature, negative meaning transfer prevails over the high self-brand congruity barriers that managers attempt to build by employing endorsers to transfer positive meanings to their brands. Using three pre-studies and three experiments involving fictitious and real-life celebrities, the authors demonstrate that the effect of negative meaning transfer on consumers’ self-expression in public and private domain and brand attitude becomes more prominent with increasing self-brand congruity and endorser-self congruity. Additionally, negative meaning transfer becomes more pronounced for a celebrity endorser compared to an expert and a celebrity-expert combined endorser. The findings offer novel implications for endorser selection and meaning transfer for marketing campaigns and brand management. Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/02650487.2021.2016267.

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Accepted/In Press date: 3 December 2021
e-pub ahead of print date: 20 December 2021
Keywords: endorsement, endorser-self congruity, Negative meaning transfer, self-brand congruity, self-expression

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 455530
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/455530
ISSN: 0265-0487
PURE UUID: 5ae42527-3cca-4cc5-961f-72edc1e7286e
ORCID for Paurav Shukla: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-1957-8622

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 24 Mar 2022 17:35
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 03:55

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Contributors

Author: Jovica Breberina
Author: Paurav Shukla ORCID iD
Author: Veronica Rosendo-Rios

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