Identity Brand Avoidance : Understanding the Interdependencies and Main Drivers of Brand Avoidance

As everyday consumers become more engaged with their products and services, it is apparent that they are more willing to associate with certain brands. While most existing literature focuses on creating strong consumer-brand relationships and fostering brand loyalty, there has only been an interest in brand avoidance in the last several years. As this particular area of study is largely unexplored, fundamental concepts expressed in Michael Lee’s work (Lee, 2007; Lee, Conroy & Motion, 2009a, b, 2012) are used as a base for this study and subsequently expanded. This work simplifies the existing model of brand avoidance and questions the division within types of brand avoidance by understanding the connections between them. To examine this issue, we conduct a large-scale quantitative survey. The results showed that either: 1. Brand avoidance is a result of converging factors and different types of mutually reinforcing types of the phenomenon; or 2. Brand avoidance is initially expressed a specific type, and subsequently, additional types are adopted to justify one’s decision. Future research could focus on quantifying the relationships among the individual types.