NATIONAL HATE TOWARDS GLOBAL BRANDS

Abstract

Brand hate refers to a phenomenon in which consumers develop negative emotions and relationships towards brands. Given the empowerment of consumers on social media, the construct has increasingly attracted the attention of marketing scholars and practitioners. The objective of this paper is to explore how consumer generated content in social media platforms enable the development of brand hate. On February 6th, 2023, a devastating earthquake affected 10 provinces in Turkey leading to the death of more than 50000 citizens. While several institutions immediately started taking measures to help those in need, some brands remained silent on social media. This silence initiated consumers’ social media protest. Data was collected from the official social media accounts of two global brands, Starbucks and Netflix, and data was analyzed using sentiment analysis. The research findings advance current research on brand hate in several ways: the phenomenon is explored in the intersection of several antecedents, employing an emotional and relationship perspective, collecting data from a collectivistic culture, and using new data collection and analysis methods.