“I Desire A Brand When I See How They are Different from Me”: Differential Effects of Blatant and Subtle Brand Rejection

People choose brands to express their self-concepts (Carroll and Ahuvia, 2006, pp. 82). When the brand they aspire to does not consider them as valuable consumers, they feel being rejected. In this work, we conceptualize two forms of communication strategies of brand segmentation—blatant and subtle mode of brand rejection and distinguish their effects on consumers’ brand desire. In prior work, blatant prejudice is to avoid any contact with outgroup members, whereas subtle prejudice is to emphasize cultural differences between groups (e.g., Hamburger and Hewstone, 1997). We conceptualize Blatant Brand Rejection (BBR) as a market segmentation that emphasizes consumers are “not good enough,” and consumers get a direct and explicit signal that they are not wanted by this brand as one of its important consumers. Subtle Brand Rejection (SBR), by contrast, emphasizes the brand’s target consumers, and consumers get an indirect, concealed, and implicit signal that they are different from the target consumers. Both SBR and BBR reject “unwanted” brand recipients, but we argue that they have different effects on consumers’ psychological and behavioral reactions. When consumers pursue a brand but encounter BBR, the explicit signal is a threat to their positive self-concept, activating defense mechanism (Baumeister, Dale and Sommer, 1998) and making consumers to avoid the rejecting brand. Whereas, encountering a subtle mode of rejection from a brand, consumers tend to compare themselves with the target consumers. When the target consumers are perceived to be a higher standard, this aspiration effect motivates consumers to (1) decrease the “distance” (e.g., Van, Pecher, and Zwaan, 2008), and (2) work harder to join the group of target consumers (e.g., Park, Young and Eastwick, 2015).