The DOI matches its Crossref record; 60 of the 60 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
When Humanizing Brands Goes Wrong: The Detrimental Effect of Brand Anthropomorphization amid Product Wrongdoings
Abstract
The brand relationship literature shows that the humanizing of brands and products generates more favorable consumer attitudes and thus enhances brand performance. However, the authors propose negative downstream consequences of brand humanization; that is, the anthropomorphization of a brand can negatively affect consumers’ brand evaluations when the brand faces negative publicity caused by product wrongdoings. They find that consumers who believe in personality stability (i.e., entity theorists) view anthropomorphized brands that undergo negative publicity less favorably than nonanthropomorphized brands. In contrast, consumers who advocate personality malleability (i.e., incremental theorists) are less likely to devalue an anthropomorphized brand from a single instance of negative publicity. Finally, the authors explore three firm response strategies (i.e., denial, apology, and compensation) that can affect the evaluations of anthropomorphized brands for consumers with different implicit theory perspectives. They find that entity theorists have more difficulty in combating the adverse effects of brand anthropomorphization than incremental theorists. Furthermore, they demonstrate that compensation (vs. denial or apology) is the only effective response among entity theorists.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Baron, R. M., & Kenny, D. A. (1986) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.51.6.1173 · Cited by 91,532
Multiple regression: testing and interpreting interactions
(1992) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.29-3352 · Cited by 36,654
Journal of personality and social psychology
Armstrong, J. S. (1988) · International Journal of Forecasting · doi:10.1016/0169-2070(88)90126-4 · Cited by 10,485
Cacioppo, J. T., & Petty, R. E. (1982) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.42.1.116 · Cited by 5,359
On seeing human: A three-factor theory of anthropomorphism
Epley, N., Waytz, A., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2007) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.114.4.864 · Cited by 4,069 · cited 2×
“Anthropomorphism involves attributing mind, intentions, effortful thinking, emotional states, and behavioral features to nonhuman objects (Aggarwal and McGill 2007; Epley, Waytz, and Cacioppo 2007).”
BackgroundGray, H. M., Gray, K., & Wegner, D. M. (2007) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1134475 · Cited by 2,342 · cited 2×
“For example, Gray, Gray, and Wegner (2007) show that greater attributions of mindfulness to nonhuman entities correlate with liking for the entity and a desire to protect it and make it happy.”
Background(2010) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.47-6626 · Cited by 2,212
The person and the situation: perspectives of social psychology
(1992) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.29-3604 · Cited by 2,208
Embodied Conversational Agents
(2000) · The MIT Press eBooks · doi:10.7551/mitpress/2697.001.0001 · Cited by 1,799
Culture and cause: American and Chinese attributions for social and physical events.
Morris, M. W., & Peng, K. (1994) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.67.6.949 · Cited by 1,537
Cited by
van Doorn, J., Mende, M., Noble, S. M., Hulland, J., Ostrom, A. L., Grewal, D., & Petersen, J. A. (2017) · Journal of Service Research · doi:10.1177/1094670516679272 · Cited by 1,344
Managing Brands in the Social Media Environment
Gensler, S., Völckner, F., Liu-Thompkins, Y., & Wiertz, C. (2013) · Journal of Interactive Marketing · doi:10.1016/j.intmar.2013.09.004 · Cited by 911
Customer service chatbots: Anthropomorphism and adoption
Sheehan, B., Jin, H. S., & Gottlieb, U. (2020) · Journal of Business Research · doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.04.030 · Cited by 667
Exploring positively- versus negatively-valenced brand engagement: a conceptual model
D. Hollebeek, L., & Chen, T. (2014) · Journal of Product & Brand Management · doi:10.1108/jpbm-06-2013-0332 · Cited by 516
To Err Is Human(-oid): How Do Consumers React to Robot Service Failure and Recovery?
Choi, S., Mattila, A. S., & Bolton, L. E. (2021) · Journal of Service Research · doi:10.1177/1094670520978798 · Cited by 502
Metadata
- Authors
- Puzakova, M., Kwak, H., & Rocereto, J. F.
- Venue
- Journal of Marketing
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2013-05
- Volume
- 77
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 81-100
- ISSN
- 0022-2429 (ISSN-L)
- 1547-7185
- OpenAlex
- W2150908140
- Cited by
- 388
- References
- 60
- FWCI
- 21.94
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: When Humanizing Brands Goes Wrong: The Detrimental Effect of Brand Anthropomorphization amid Product Wrongdoings. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1509/jm.11.0510
- The paper
- Puzakova, M., Kwak, H., & Rocereto, J. F. (2013). When Humanizing Brands Goes Wrong: The Detrimental Effect of Brand Anthropomorphization amid Product Wrongdoings. Journal of Marketing. https://doi.org/10.1509/jm.11.0510
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.