USC Marshall

Four studies investigate consumers’ moral judgments about a brand when given information about a single employee’s morally offensive action. Even though the action occurred in the employee’s private life and was unrelated to product quality, a strong association between the employee and the firm damaged the firm’s moral reputation. Study 1 used survey data to show that consumers’ perceptions of the strength of the association of the same employee with the firm can vary and this influences their judgments of the brand’s moral identity. Study 2 manipulates the extent to which the employee is associated with the firm and the valence of the employee’s behavior (an offensive behavior or a philanthropic behavior), and shows greater employee representativeness leads to sharper differences between effects of moral and immoral behaviors. Study 3 investigates consumers’ judgments when an individual employee behaves offensively but many other employees behave philanthropically. The results show that the type of philanthropic activity matters. Study 4 follows up on issues raised in studies 1-3, and finds that either a firm’s disassociating itself from the offensive employee or information that its employees’ engaging in philanthropic activities can improve the firm’s relative to doing nothing.

We review a growing body of research in consumer behavior that has examined when consumers humanize brands by perceiving them as like, part of, or in a relationship with themselves. One research stream shows that sometimes consumers perceive brands as having human-like forms, minds, and personality characteristics. A second stream identifies ways that a consumer perceives a brand as being congruent with or connected to the self. Finally, a third highlights that consumers can view brands in ways that are analogous to the types of relationships they have with people. We review research in these three areas and point out connections among these research streams. In part, we accomplish this by showing that factors associated with the SEEK model, which are designed to explain anthropomorphic tendencies, are also relevant to other ways of humanizing brands. We identify major propositions derived from this research and several areas for which additional research is needed. We conclude with recommendations for the many opportunities for expanding our conceptual and empirical understanding of this domain.