A Study On The Impact Of Personification On Brand Failure

Brand personification is becoming a widely-spread marketing phenomenon in both domestic and international market. Yet as it was discussed by numerous researchers, it is impossible for a brand to avoid occasional failure. So what happens if a personified brand commit a failure, and how would consumer evaluate the consequence of such failure? Prior researches on anthropology suggested that the humans are "bounded in rationality", which means that comparing to organizations, human individuals are more likely to commit certain type of faults. The researchers therefore propose that personification may alter the way the consumers perceive the given brand and therefore, comparing to integrity-related failures, personified brands suffer less from competence-related failures.This conducted3individual tests to test the proposed hypotheses. In Study1, the researchers tested the impact of different types of brand failures on personified brands. The study ran a2(personified vs. non-personified) X2(competence failure vs. integrity failure) test.166participants were involved in the test. The researchers used different versions of descriptions in order to manipulate the consumers’ perception of personification as well as types of failure.127university students participated in Study2. The purpose of Study2was to repeat the effect of personification and types of brand failure in the service context. The researchers proposed that for both service and product brands, personified brands are less likely to be affected by competence related failures, while they are more likely to be damaged by integrity related failures. In addition, the researchers conducted Study3as a follow-up study. The purpose was to test the effectiveness of apology for personified brand when it commits specific type of failure.89participants were involved in Study3. The researchers proposed that for personified brands, apology is more effective in handling competence related failures than when handling integrity failures.The result of the study is two-fold: firstly, Study1and Study2proved that personification can be a key factor in determining the impact of different types of brand failure on consumers’ attitude; furthermore, for personified brands, apology appears to be superior in handling competence related failures than integrity related failures.In a nutshell, this study enriched the theoretical interpretation of brand personification: personification may introduce the quality of "irrationality" to the brands and therefore alter the consumers’ perception towards brand behavior. Moreover, this study is among the first attempts in examining the impact of failure types on personified brand failure. What is more, this study reminds the managers that personification may have a profound influence on consumer brand evaluation as well as contingency strategies. The effectiveness of apology may depend on the consumers’expectation of the brand as a "human" or as a "lifeless entity".