A well-accepted proposition in the literature of corporate strategic communication and public relations is that consumer-brand relationships (CBRs) affect corporate crisis communication. However, it is inconclusive whether CBRs protect or work against brands, because both buffering effects and love-becomes-hate effects have been found. This study attempts to explain and bridge the seemingly inconsistent findings by clarifying the effects of different types of CBRs in different brand transgressions.
Re-conceptualizing CBRs into non-identifying relationships and identifying relationships, this study examined the possible interaction effects of CBRs and crises on consumers' attitudes and emotions, which then influence their behavioral intentions. A three-step multi-group structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the data collected from an online experiment with nearly 900 consumers of two brands.
Although non-identifying relationships offer buffering effects, identifying relationships primarily offer love-becomes-hate effects by intensifying negative emotions such as anger and disappointment, which in turn affect consumers' behavioral intentions. Such patterns hold regardless of whether a crisis directly threatens the core meaning of the brand.
This study clarifies the effects of different types of CBRs in crises and shows that deep psychological connections (i.e. identifying relationships) offer love-becomes-hate effects. It suggests that one promising future research direction for crisis communication and public relations scholars is to examine how to mitigate such love-becomes-hate effects so that brands can keep their loyal consumers.
