Wayne Hoyer from the University of Texas at Austin held a talk on the topic of consumer brand sabotage as part of our Department’s Research Seminar Series. Despite its high damage potential, only little is known about the consequences of aggressive consumer sabotage activities. Wayne presented his work on progress on how and when exposure to a consumer sabotage affects consumers’ attitude towards the brand and subsequent behavior (purchase intention and NWOM), whether motives such as perceived betrayal and social identity threat mediate this effect and to what degree this effect depends on the consumer-brand relationship quality. The conceptualization is based on theories from social psychology such as interpersonal betrayal and social identity theory and preliminary empirical support from an online-experiments was presented and discussed.

We thank Wayne for his visit, as well as for the engaging talk he shared with us. For information on the upcoming guest speakers at the Research Seminar Series, lease check the agenda.