Seminar (Dept. of Marketing)

Title:How Brands Can Benefit by Reappropriating Insults

Speaker: Lingrui Zhou (University of Hong Kong)

Time: 10:00-11:30 am, April 15th(Wednesday), 2024

Venue：Room 1008, Mingde Business Building

Language：English

Abstract：

Brands are increasingly finding themselves on the receiving end of public insults from a variety of sources—including consumers, industry experts, and competitors—that can have an adverse impact on firm success. While sometimes warranted, many insults feel unwarranted or disproportionately aggressive. Brands generally respond to such undeserved degradation by rejecting or ignoring the insult. This research explores a third potential strategy: reappropriating the insult. Across four experiments, we reveal that reappropriation—an act of intentional self-labeling with an externally-imposed derogatory label—can garner unexpected benefits for brands, including greater choice, interest, and more positive attitudes. The advantage of reappropriation is driven by both perceptions of the brand’s confidence and amusement towards the brand and is specific to situations in which the reappropriated insult is perceived to be nonmoral and unjustified in nature. This work contributes to our understanding of how brands can recover from negative events and provides practical insights for brand managers facing certain types of hostility.

Short biography：

Lingrui (Ling-Ling) Zhou joined the University of Hong Kong in 2023. She completed her PhD at Duke University. Her research examines how different types of relationships, between both brands and consumers, affect perceptions and decision making. In her first stream of research, she investigates the impact of brand-to-brand interactions and brand-to-consumer communication on consumers. In her second stream of research, she examines consumer-to-consumer relationships, focusing on interpersonal connections and gift giving. Her research have been published in leading journals such as Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research.