How Consumers’ Styles of Thinking Can Control Brand Dilution

Publications

Download

Suggested Citation

Monga, A., & Hsu, L. (2018). How Consumers’ Styles of Thinking Can Control Brand Dilution. GfK Marketing Intelligence Review, 10(1), 40-45

Year

2018

Authors

Alokparna (Sonia) Basu Monga,
Liwu Hsu

Publication title

How Consumers’ Styles of Thinking Can Control Brand Dilution

Publication

NIM Marketing Intelligence Review

Download

Alokparna Basu Monga and Liwu Hsu

Understanding consumers’ ways of thinking can help identify strategies to limit brand damage and elicit more favorable reactions from disapproving consumers. Analytic thinkers’ beliefs about a brand are diluted when they see negative information; those of holistic thinkers remain unaffected. While both analytic and holistic thinkers blame the brand equally for quality and manufacturing problems, holistic thinkers are more likely to blame contextual factors outside of the brand than analytic thinkers. This ability of holistic thinkers to focus on the outside context is the reason why their brand beliefs are not diluted.

State-of-the-art crisis management should be proactive vis-à-vis potentially negative events. Crisis communications that highlight contextual factors as triggers of negative incidents offer a powerful mechanism to restrict brand damage. Additionally, elaborational messages that clarify the nature of the brand extension can curb negative thoughts from analytic consumers and boost their responses.

Authors

Alokparna (Sonia) Basu Monga, Professor of Marketing, Rutgers Business School – Newark and New Brunswick, NJ, USA, smonga@business.rutgers.edu
Liwu Hsu, Assistant Professor of Marketing, College of Business, University of Alabama, Huntsville, AL, USA, liwu.hsu@uah.edu

Share Publication

Copy link

Here you can find more exciting articles of this issue.

To the entire issue

In an increasingly risky socioeconomic environment, management needs to proactively consider brand-related risks. To understand brands as …

Brands can interact both directly and indirectly with fake news. In some instances, brands are the victims of fake news and, other times, …

In today’s world, knowing more about a brand can make people think worse of it. Rather than helping a brand, increased familiarity can …

The physical and social realities, mental biases and limitations of being human differentiate human brands from others. It is their very …

To minimize the potential loss of market share and profits, it is important to understand factors that drive cannibalization. Key brand …

If company revenues fluctuate, the resulting volatility makes it more difficult to project the company’s future revenues and earnings and …

Whether it be the NFL, Dove, Wells Fargo, VW or countless others–managers need only open a daily newspaper to see how things can go …

Like a stock portfolio, each relationship type offers a brand higher or lower growth opportunities and risks. The type of relationship is …

Scroll to top

Other articles of the MIR issue “Brand Risk Matters”