Abstract

In today’s connected market, brands are more likely than ever to face negative press that can put their customer relationships to the test. Building and fortifying positive aspects of the brand-customer relationship (such as brand commitment, brand love and self-brand connections) may ward off some of the impact of negative information on customers, but this does not always provide full protection. Even customers who love a brand can turn against it when negative information enters the picture. Considering this, the current study provides an exploratory investigation into a new way to build up customer resilience that would otherwise not be formed simply by strengthening positive attributes of the customer-brand relationship. It argues that brands can strengthen their customers’ immunity to negative brand-related information by using an immunity metric (i.e., merely asking customers to reflect on their immunity makes them more resilient to actual negative information in the future). The construct of immunity has the dual benefit of being diagnostic of relationship strength, as well as acting as an immunizing agent. We test this effect and the process underlying it using three pilot studies, three multi-method studies, and interviews with customers and managers across different contexts. By doing so, the study establishes the theoretical and practical value of customer immunity to negative information and makes critical conceptual and pragmatic contributions to the existing body of customer research.

Customer resistance to negative information

The focus of the current study is on building customers’ resistance to potential negative information they might encounter in the future. In the marketing literature, most studies have focused on what brands can do to build positive aspects of the customer-brand relationship slowly over time to achieve some protection against negative events, or on recovery strategies after the event (see Table 1). Things that help when brands face negative information include strong brand commitment (Ahluwalia et al., 2000; Ahluwalia, 2000; Germann et al., 2014), strong brand image (Grifn et al., 1991; DeCarlo et al. 2007), positive customer expectations (Dawar & Pillutla, 2000), high emotional bonding (Mattila, 2004), strong connections (Swaminathan et al., 2007; Cheng et al., 2012; Wilson et al., 2017; Escalas & Bettman, 2003), brand attachment (Park et al., 2010; Whelan & Dawar, 2016), and brand love (Batra et al., 2012).

General discussion

This paper proposed a new construct of customer immunity and conceptualized it as customers’ resistance to changing how they view a brand when confronted with negative information about that brand. We developed a parsimonious measure of immunity that captures the extent to which the relationship between a customer and a brand is resilient to negative information. We have investigated immunity, showing that it helps customers form a stronger resistance to negative information. Customers’ desire to protect a brand and consideration of varied datapoints when assessing their relationship with a brand help explain the efect. We have provided support for this result studying diferent brand incidents and relying on diferent respondent samples across diferent purchase contexts. Furthermore, we have shown that immunity strengthens the positive efects of traditional relationship strength measures such as brand commitment, self-brand connections, and brand love.