Brand aversion is an antonym of
brand loyalty
In marketing, brand loyalty describes a consumer's positive feelings towards a brand, and their dedication to purchasing the brand's products and/or services repeatedly, regardless of deficiencies, a competitor's actions, or changes in the envir ...
. It is a distrust or a dislike of products from a particular
brand
A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create an ...
on the basis of past experiences with that brand and its products, similar to
taste aversion
Conditioned taste aversion occurs when an animal acquires an aversion to the taste of a food that was paired with aversive stimuli. The Garcia effect is that the aversion develops more strongly for stimuli that cause nausea than other stimuli. Th ...
. Brand aversion, also called brand hate, can lead to brand avoidance, but it is not the same. Both with brand aversion and brand avoidance the feelings towards the brand are negative. Only the difference is that the strength of those negative feelings/relationship towards the brand are weak with brand avoidance and strong with brand aversion. Moreover, experiencing brand aversion is more intense and stronger than experiencing brand dislike.
Brand aversion can be the effect of obtrusive
marketing
Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...
strategies, bad press, a mass
product recall
A product recall is a request from a manufacturer to return a product after the discovery of safety issues or product defects that might endanger the consumer or put the maker/seller at risk of legal action.
The recall is an effort to limit ruin ...
, or other poor
product launch
In business and engineering, new product development (NPD) covers the complete process of bringing a new product to market, renewing an existing product or introducing a product in a new market. A central aspect of NPD is product design, along ...
es. Also extrinsic factors like the price of a product, the availability, and a salespersons' recommendations are likely to influence a consumers' brand aversion. Before even interacting with a brand, consumers will always expect to be receiving fair outcomes and justice, and when a brand cannot deliver consumers' expectations or the promises they have made, the perceived injustice of consumers will increase rapidly. In other words, then the outcome of what the brand offers is repeatedly lower than the consumers' expectations, the consumer eventually will start feeling aversion toward the targeted brand and therefore also tries to distance themselves from the brand (brand avoidance).
Psychologically, the reasons for brand aversion have been explained by the attachment-aversion model using the same three dimensions ("3 Es") that characterize a product:
#enticing/annoying the self
#enabling/disabling the self and
#enriching/impoverishing the self (benefits/liabilities).
The more annoying/disabling/impoverishing a brand "feels", the more aversion will be produced and vice versa. As is the case with all brands, the conceived qualities need neither correspond to real assets nor shortcomings.
There are three possible outcome behaviors when a consumer experiences brand aversion:
# Brand avoidance (characterized by consumers distancing themselves from the brand they hate, because they do not want to have any type of interaction with the brand anymore)
# Negative word of mouth (characterized by talking negatively about the brand either in private to family and friends or in public on Websites or forums of the brand)
# Brand revenge (characterized by complaining to employees of the brand, or literally destroying the brand by stealing products or damaging the store)
See also
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Brand architecture
In the field of brand management, brand architecture is the structure of brands within an organizational entity. It is the way brands within a company's portfolio are related to, and differentiated from, one another. According to J.-N. Kapferer, ...
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Brand equity
Brand equity, in marketing, is the worth of a brand in and of itself – i.e., the social value of a well-known brand name. The owner of a well-known brand name can generate more revenue simply from brand recognition, as consumers perceive the prod ...
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Brand management
In marketing, brand management begins with an analysis on how a brand is currently perceived in the market, proceeds to planning how the brand should be perceived if it is to achieve its objectives and continues with ensuring that the brand is per ...
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Customer engagement
Customer engagement is an interaction between an external consumer/customer (either B2C or B2B) and an organization (company or brand) through various online or offline channels. According to Hollebeek, Srivastava and Chen's (2019, p. 166) S-D lo ...
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Employer branding Employer brand is branding and marketing the entirety of the employment experience. It describes an employer's reputation as a place to work, and their employee value proposition, as opposed to the more general corporate brand reputation and value ...
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Evangelism marketing
Evangelism marketing is an advanced form of word-of-mouth marketing in which companies develop customers who believe so strongly in a particular product or service that they freely try to convince others to buy and use it. The customers become vo ...
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Semiotics and globalization
References
Branding terminology
Behaviorism
Brand management
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