When Humanizing Brands Goes Wrong: The Detrimental Effect of Brand Anthropomorphization amid Product Wrongdoings

By Marina Puzakova, Hyokjin Kwak, Joseph F. Rocereto. 2013

387 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Marketing, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/72c0c9f21f06a741634053fddf1d7737f3ea5e46

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Clinical Psychology

1. Dhruv Grewal
2. Benedikt Schnurr
3. Roland Schroll
4. Philipp A. Rauschnabel
5. Ann L. McGill
6. D. Macinnis
7. Aaron C. Ahuvia
8. V. Folkes

In Marketing

1. Marina Puzakova
2. E. Wan
3. R. Chen
4. Linyun W. Yang
5. Tom Chen
6. V. Folkes
7. D. Macinnis
8. Ann L. McGill

In Sociology and Political Science

1. E. Wan
2. R. Chen
3. Marina Puzakova
4. P. Aggarwal
5. V. Folkes
6. D. Macinnis
7. Linyun W. Yang
8. Tom Chen

Citations in the corpus

• On being attractive, social and visually appealing in social media: The effects of anthropomorphic tourism brands on Facebook fan pages (2018, positive): “Anthropomorphism is understood as the process of attributing mind, intentions, effortful thinking, emotional states, and behavioural features to non-human objects; a process through which consumers perceive brands as capable of reasoning and intent (Puzakova, Kwak, & Rocereto, 2013).”
• Judging a Book by Its Cover? The Effect of Anthropomorphism on Product Attribute Processing and Consumer Preference (2016, background): “Prior research has shown that putting a human-like face on nonhuman objects increases the tendency to anthropomorphize the objects (Ahn et al. 2014; Puzakova et al. 2013).”
• You’re so lovable: Anthropomorphism and brand love (2014, background): “…that consumers have a strong tendency to engage in anthropomorphic thinking, as they mentalize brands, products and objects of all sorts (Kiesler, 2006; Aggarwal and McGill, 2007; Ahuvia, 2008; Landwehr et al, 2011; Delbaere et al, 2011; Kervyn et al, 2012; Hart et al, 2013; Puzakova et al, 2013).”
• Seeing brands as humans: Development and validation of a brand anthropomorphism scale (2020, background): “Similarly, through visual cues the anthropomorphised brand was portrayed as engaging in human behaviour (Puzakova et al., 2013).”
• Brands as Rivals: Consumer Pursuit of Distinctiveness and the Role of Brand Anthropomorphism (2018, background): “As a measure of brand consideration (Puzakova, Kwak, and Rocereto 2013), respondents provided their agreement with two statements (e.g., “I can imagine buying a Zidley bike”; 1¼ “strongly disagree,” 7¼ “strongly agree”; r¼ .81, p< .001; web appendix W2).”