Socio-politically silent brands: A double edged sword

Abstract

The impact of brand activism is gaining interest in consumer research and managerial practice. However, literature on brands that remain silent and stay out of polarized sociopolitical issues is limited. This research addresses this gap by proposing and confirming consumers’ attributions toward socio-politically silent brands (SSB) as self-serving and socially justified motives through an exploratory text analysis. The study shows that brands’ silence does not always have a negative influence on consumer attitudes, and subsequently on consumer-based brand equity and their purchase intentions but may have a positive influence depending upon the attributions consumers make. Using structural equation modeling and an experiment-based study, the findings also show that brands’ silence predominantly influence liberal consumers’ attitudes whose self-focus motivations varyingly shape their attitudes based on the attributions they make of the motives behind brands’ silence.