Given a lack of tactics for addressing brand hate, most managers tend to ignore brand haters, and instead dedicate their resources towards consumers who like or love their brand. Similarly, relative to the volume of research on positive brand emotions, the academic literature exploring negative brand emotions is limited. Moreover, research indicates that compared to positive brand information, negative brand information is more diagnostic, and ultimately more damaging. In contrast to such findings and practices, this dissertation proposes a strategy whereby using advertising to openly acknowledge that a brand is hated (i.e. hate-acknowledging advertising) can be advantageous for corporate polarizing brands. The findings suggest that, compared to a traditional ad (i.e., an ad which only focuses on positive brand attributes or information), a hate-acknowledging produces higher levels of brand trust through the mediating influence of ad credibility. This research also demonstrates that hate-acknowledging advertising (vs. traditional advertising) has a stronger and more favorable influence on consumer intentions to engage in positive word of mouth, and that consumer brand emotions moderate this effect. Specifically, the favorable influence of hate-acknowledging on positive word of mouth intensifies with higher levels of consumer love towards a polarizing brand.

Abstract The purpose of this thesis was to gain a better understanding of the relatively new concept of Brand Hate. More specifically, how Brand Hate can occur in people with no to little experience with certain brands, so called non-customers. We want to believe that humans are a rational being that takes decisions based on all the available information and does not jump to conclusions before all options have been exhausted. But upon closer examination theoretical concepts such as brand love can be found. A concept that argues that users of a brand utilize the brand itself in order to internally identify values he or she holds, as well as showcasing those values and personality traits externally to others. With this theory as a basis the relatively new concept of Brand Hate was born. The new concept, posits that there has to be another side of the brand love, where people actually hate or dislike the brand. Up to this point very little research has been done within the area, and that is where the authors of this thesis saw an opportunity to fill a research gap. There has been no previous research attempting to understand WHY these negative feelings comes to present themselves within people. But as soon as the work on the thesis had started another opportunity presented itself, it seemed as though people hate or dislike brands that they themselves does not even use. As a result non-customers became the focal point of investigation of this thesis.  The research itself included three different focus groups, with in total nineteen respondents that discussed a wide variety of topics. During the sessions the discussions touched upon what brands they disliked, why they disliked them and how the respondents identified with other groups of people. This gave the authors the ability to gain a deeper understanding of the psychological reasoning behind why certain brands the respondents did not use were severely hated or disliked.    The findings from the research seem to point in one very specific direction, group identification is an integral reason why non-customers started to hate or dislike brands. No matter how good companies are creating an appealing brand, that same brand will always risk to become distorted, as a result of the different targeted user groups. This research shows that people let their emotions and prejudices come between what they perceive a brand to be, and what companies want them to be. The result is people prematurely judging brands based upon the customers of that brand. If the respondents did not like the user group of a certain brand, that same brand would be inscribed with all the negative connotations with the user groups, thereby distorting the public brand image far from what the companies might intend them to be.

Ce travail doctoral concerne la haine envers la marque ressentie par les consommateurs. Présentée dans cette recherche comme impliquant une attitude globale négative envers une marque, elle est composée de plusieurs émotions négatives et engendre toujours un comportement. A partir de trois recherches exploratoires et de quatre recherches quantitatives, (1) nous définissons le concept en cinq dimensions ; (2) nous mettons en évidence l’attitude négative envers la marque en tant qu’antécédent de la haine envers la marque et de ses dimensions, ainsi que le bouche-à-oreille négatif et l’évitement de la marque comme leurs conséquences ; (3) nous identifions les variables modératrices de ces relations que sont le locus de contrôle, la réactance psychologique, l’estime de soi et la propension du consommateur à résister ; et enfin (4) nous dressons quatre profils des consommateurs haineux à partir des dimensions de la haine envers la marque et des données socio-démographiques / This doctoral paper deals with brand hate related by consumers. Presented in this research as involving an overall negative attitude toward a brand, it is composed of several negative emotions, and always generates a behavior. From three exploratory and four quantitative studies, (1) we define the concept in five dimensions; (2) we highlight the negative attitude toward the brand as brand hate and its dimensions antecedent and negative word-of-mouth and the avoidance of the brand as their consequences; (3) we identify the moderator variables of these relationships as the locus of control, psychological reactance, self-esteem and propensity of consumer to resist; and (4) we draw four hate consumers profiles from the dimensions of brand hate and sociodemographic data

Brand loyalty has been studied extensively in consumer-brand relationship literature. However, the negative side of these relationships has not been studied to the same degree. This paper starts with Court et al.’s (2009) loyalty loop as part of the consumer decision journey and proposes that consumers may stop being loyal to a brand due to various circumstances.The authors propose a negative view of the loyalty loop, the disloyalty loop, exist, in which consumers become disloyal. Furthermore, the authors conducted this study in order to find out if this relationship exists, the disloyalty loop, within the framework of social media platforms, i.e. applications who allow communication among users over the Internet. These platforms should not solely be seen as online communication tools, but as brands themselves.Semi-structured interviews with social media users were conducted showing that consumers can navigate between the loyalty and disloyalty loops, and even exit the brand relationship completely. These findings indicate that consumers’ brand loyalty should not be taken for granted, and service failures may cause them to reduce their patronage, abandon the brand, and even influence other consumers negatively through word-of-mouth.