Politics, Promotions, and Pandemics: Political Ideologies Shape Consumers’ Responses to Framed versus Unframed Brand Logos and COVID-19 Recommendations

Abstract

This research examines how exposing conservative (vs. liberal) consumers to a framed logo improves their evaluation of the promoted brand relative to seeing an unframed version of that logo. A core effect reveals that framed, but not unframed, logos generally elicit more favorable product purchase intentions as conservativism increases. Such an effect is theorized to occur because framed stimuli are symbolically aligned with a need for structure that is typically associated with conservatism. Consistent with this possibility, liberals who are primed to think about structure exhibit responses similar to those made by conservatives (i.e., more favorable evaluations of framed logos). The effect observed among conservatives is eliminated, however, when frames are viewed as restrictions on freedom. The implications of these findings are also extended to examine whether framing messages that endorse governmental recommendations to adopt COVID-curbing behavior influences how conservatives respond to these advocacies.