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LONDON,
ON, August 4, 2009 - The
relationship between consumers and a
company's brand can be a bit like a
marriage – with the same potential for
divorce.
New
research from Matt Thomson, an assistant
professor of marketing at Richard Ivey
School of Business, explores what
prompts people to lash out at the brand
they once loved and how companies can
preserve the union.
"The people
who love you are the ones who are most
profitable for you, but you have to look
after them, like a good marriage," said
Thomson. "A strong identification with
your brand is an important indicator of
positive brand equity, but it could also
foreshadow negative things if you don't
really look after those customers."
Thomson
cites the backlash against The Coca-Cola
Company in 1985 when it tried to replace
its flagship soft drink with a
reformulation known as "New Coke" as an
example of the intense emotions people
can have toward strong brands. The
company learned the hard way that the
old Coke was it and was besieged with
angry calls and letters from consumers.
"What the
company didn't understand was they were
asking the best customers to reinvent
themselves," Thomson said. "Our research
suggests that a lot of people who are
leading the charge against a particular
company or leading boycotts against
particular brands are the same people
who used to love the company and its
products. These people feel betrayed,
embarrassed and ashamed. The end result
is consumers who loved you once now hate
you."
Thomson and
his colleagues Allison Johnson, an
assistant professor of marketing at Ivey
Business School, and Margaret Matear, a
Ph.D candidate at Queen's University,
used in-depth interviews and surveys to
learn about people's hostility to
particular brands and how it came about.
"It's sort
of like a marriage going bad over time.
There was no single moment that stuck
out like walking in on a cheating
spouse," Thomson said.
Details of
the research were released today in the
August edition of impact, an online
monthly publication featuring new
research from faculty at the Richard
Ivey School of Business. To read the
full article, click here:
http://www.ivey.uwo.ca/publications/impact/vol15no8-thomson.htm
Ron Close,
Executive Entrepreneur-in-Residence at
Ivey, also discusses how students gain
entrepreneurial know-how through a
team-based field project called the New
Venture project in the Faculty Focus
feature. For the full article, click
here:
http://www.ivey.uwo.ca/publications/impact/vol15no8-ff-close.htm
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For more
information, please contact:
Dawn Milne, Richard Ivey School of
Business, 519-850-2536,
dmilne@ivey.ca
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