Market-resistance and Valentine's Day events

Extending resistance theories, this article examines multi-method data spanning over seven years of events related to a holiday market. In the context of Valentine's Day, the authors present findings and develop knowledge on anti-consumption and alternative consumption. Specifically, this article introduces the recurring events of gift-resistance, retail-resistance, and market-resistance. Such consumer resistance often coexists with movements towards individualism and creation of more unique alternative consumption traditions.     

The rejection of brand hegemony

Purveyors of strong brands can, through a number of the means intended to bolster their brand image, alienate and frustrate their consumers to the point of creating a broad-based reaction — the rejection of brand hegemony. The literature describes a number of motivations for anti-consumption behavior. This paper explores the rejection of brand hegemony as a motivation for, and an expression of, anti-consumption, through a phenomenological study of the open source software (OSS) community. The study explores whether, and to what extent, the OSS community actively rejects software's dominant brand, Microsoft, and what motivations may be at work in the creation and expression of that rejection. Findings elucidate the necessary conditions for the rejection of brand hegemony to occur, revealing valuable lessons for vendors. These conditions comprise environment, positive motivation and negative motivation factors. The first two conditions are relatively constant, regardless of vendor's actions, while the last is largely of the vendor's creation. The managerial and theory-building implications of the study indicate that purveyors of strong brands may inadvertently create their own anti-consumption nemesis.     

An evaluation of strategic responses to consumer boycotts

This article documents the relative effectiveness of the various marketing strategies, in particular the public relations strategies, that firms use to combat the likelihood of boycotts as a politically motivated form of anti-consumption. This study focuses on boycotts that relate to corporate practices and aims to provide a rationale for appropriate publicity-based responses to the threat of corporate practice related boycotts. The purpose is to determine whether the techniques that firms use to mitigate the detrimental effects of negative publicity will be similarly effective for a boycott situation. The authors use two experiments to investigate the influence of publicity-based strategic responses to boycott requests on consumers' perceptions and behavior.     

Anti-consumption and brand avoidance

This article focuses on a particular form of anti-consumption; brand avoidance. Specifically, it explores why people may avoid some brands, even when their financial circumstances allow them the option to purchase. The authors use qualitative data to develop a conceptual framework that helps clarify why consumers avoid certain brands. This study reveals three types of brand avoidance: experiential, identity and moral brand avoidance. Experiential brand avoidance occurs because of negative first hand consumption experiences that lead to unmet expectations. Identity avoidance develops when the brand image is symbolically incongruent with the individual's identity. Moral avoidance arises when the consumer's ideological beliefs clash with certain brand values or associations, particularly when the consumer is concerned about the negative impact of a brand on society. Finally, this study highlights potential strategies that managers could implement to deal with brand avoidance.     

Reprisal, retribution and requital: Investigating customer retaliation

Customers, regardless of context or culture, will go to any extreme to retaliate against an offending service provider. Retaliation is an action taken in return for an injury or offense [Huefner, J.C. and H.K. Hunt, “Consumer retaliation as a response to dissatisfaction,” J Consum Satisf Dissatisfaction Complaining Behav, (2000); 13, 61-82.]. To date, research has had only a limited discussion of customer's use of anti-consumption behaviors as an expression of retaliation. This study uses qualitative methods to demonstrate that the motivations for retaliation extend beyond simply “getting even,” customers retaliate to teach the service provider a lesson or to save others from the same fate. The research identifies specific roles taken by customers as they retaliate, the emotions of customers and store issues that are at the root of these behaviors. In addition, the authors categorize a range of retaliatory behaviors as follows: cost/loss; consumption prevention; voice, exit and betrayal; and boycotting.     

Politically motivated brand rejection

This paper introduces the concept of politically motivated brand rejection (PMBR) as an emergent form of anti-consumption behavior. PMBR is the refusal to purchase and/or use a brand on a permanent basis because of its perceived association to a particular political ideology that the consumer opposes. Specifically, the paper discusses three distinct sets of political ideologies that can lead to rejection of certain brands by some consumers. These ideologies include predatory globalization, chauvinistic nationalism, and religious fundamentalism. The target of PMBR can be both local and global brands and consumers who engage in PMBR do not expect any change in marketing practice.     

Underdog consumption: An exploration into meanings and motives

Marketers frequently position business concerns - whether brands, teams, or stores - as the non market-dominant entity (or the “underdog”). This article examines the motives for underdog support through in-depth interviews and a focus group. Findings suggest that underdog consumers support underdogs out of empathy, as a way to ensure the maintenance of equal opportunity in competition, and as a way to provide personal inspiration. Some motives for underdog support can be interpreted to be anti-consumption (or, at least, anti-corporate) in nature. On the other hand, many underdog consumers support and identify with underdogs not necessarily as a way to keep the top dog down, but as a means to keep the little guy competing. Rather than solely “vote-against” behavior, “vote-for” behavior is very evident as well.     

Mapping symbolic (anti-) consumption

Rejection is at the heart of anti-consumption and is therefore key to some of the central relationships in symbolic consumption. However, researchers find rejection difficult to study because of the lack of material traces. This article draws on earlier frameworks to develop a new integrated and expanded conceptualization in order to achieve a more nuanced view of how rejection operates within symbolic consumption; and also to initiate research directions for investigating and theorizing rejection in anti-consumption. The focus on anti-consumption incorporates the interaction between avoidance, aversion and abandonment, and the relationship between distastes and the undesired self (mediated by the marketing, social and individual environments). A series of interrelationships and illustrations suggest how the expanded conceptualization is useful for theorizing and investigating anti-consumption.     

Purpose and object of anti-consumption

A counter movement of anti-consumption runs from the very beginning of mass-consumption societies. Four distinct types of anti-consumers, simplifiers, global impact consumers, market activists, and anti-loyal consumers, have emerged in recent years. The primary focus of anti-consumption research has been on market activists and anti-loyal consumers. This article focuses on the other two groups (i.e., the simplifiers and global impact consumers). The authors address the need for scale development to measure the general anti-consumption attitudes of these two groups. The goal is to improve the ability to identify anti-consumption attitudes and to gain a better understanding of how anti-consumption relates to other key constructs such as self-consciousness, self-actualization, and assertiveness.     

Managing anti-consumption in an excessive drinking culture

A major contemporary challenge facing governments and health professionals is that of promoting sustainable and healthy approaches to alcohol consumption in a context where excessive alcohol consumption is the dominant trend [Plant M., Plant M., Binge Britain: the need for courage. Alcoholis 2006; 25, 3: 1.]. This article reports the results of a qualitative study examining the experiences of Higher Education students in the United Kingdom who are identifiable as anti-consumers because of their opposition to the alcohol norms that predominate. The article focuses on how these students deal with the challenges and consequences that can arise from resisting the prevailing norms and practices. This article demonstrates that existing frameworks and categorizations in the contexts of anti-consumption, product and brand avoidance and coping are capable of providing useful theoretical tools for the examination of anti-consumption within the social marketing context. The article identifies some of the implicit tensions of being an anti-consumer in an environment of excessive consumption and provides examples of how consumers seek to manage these tensions. The use of the above theoretical perspectives can usefully inform policy that aims to promote sensible drinking among young people and students in particular.