When endorsers behave badly: consumer self-expression and negative meaning transfer

Abstract

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How do consumers adjust their public and private self-expression through a brand when an endorser attached to the brand gets involved in a scandal? Building on the theory of meaning transfer and congruity theory, the authors propose and demonstrate that in contrast to the extant literature, negative meaning transfer prevails over the high self-brand congruity barriers that managers attempt to build by employing endorsers to transfer positive meanings to their brands. Using three pre-studies and three experiments involving fictitious and real-life celebrities, the authors demonstrate that the effect of negative meaning transfer on consumers’ self-expression in public and private domain and brand attitude becomes more prominent with increasing self-brand congruity and endorser-self congruity. Additionally, negative meaning transfer becomes more pronounced for a celebrity endorser compared to an expert and a celebrity-expert combined endorser. The findings offer novel implications for endorser selection and meaning transfer for marketing campaigns and brand management.