On a Scale of…Can You Really Hate a Brand??

If you live in Asia you get used to explaining that 5, 7, 11 point scales just don’t work. Years of explaining that in Thailand where I live no one will ever go to the extremes. Same in Indonesia, the Philippine and many other places. A 7 point scale is more likely a 3 point scale. Experienced readers will know this. Cultural norms mean that expressing very strong passions is just not acceptable.

But for many Western clients this always led to “So no love or hate then ?” discussions. And of course that is not true either. People in this part of the world are as passionate as anywhere. And as likely to have love and hate in their lives. BUT…

As one impassioned interviewee taught me years ago … “hate is for people not things”. Now hold that thought … 

Maybe you read a previous article of mine where I questioned if “brand love” really is a thing. Thankfully quite a few people did read it and comment and share thoughts. My premise that “love” might be too strong a term for describing a feeling / relationship with a brand seemed to catch on. The need to be maybe more specific makes sense, after all as good researchers we always need to go deeper right ?

So no surprise that I have then received a lot of thoughts on brand hate as well. 

Personally I Don’t Hate a Brand

Let’s get that out of the way. In the previous article I shared the personal quirk that I have indeed drunk at least one Coke a day for over 50 years. I have worked on the advertising of the brand for a couple of decades. I am the ultimate brand loyalist, shunning any option and preferring to go without rather than drinking another brand. Do I “love” Coke. Not really. I appreciate it, I enjoy it, I am passionate about it. But I don’t love it in the way I say I love some people. And in return I don’t “hate Pepsi”. I refuse to drink it, though every year or two I have tried it again and just don’t like the after taste. I don’t like its brand message , the self inclusive “pepsi generation” idea always seemed too exclusive for me. I actually feel sorry for people who prefer it. But “hate”. No not really. That always seems to violent a term.

Like all good trained librarians (yes that was my original career choice) I have carried out the desk research and found many articles on the nature of brand hate. I have a listed a few at the end of this thought piece. Here is what they taught me:

• Hate is so passionate a word that it may just distract from what is being really felt

• When people say hate they often mean real disappointment, rejection because of poor delivery, experiences that caused personal pain or emotional harm

• That quite often it was a personal incident that led to the extreme reaction.

You “hate” a brand because it did not do what you wanted or because it reflected something you hate. 

So What Are “Hated Brands”?

I did a little research. I had been asked to give some lectures at a prestigious graduate school here in Bangkok, Sasin University. So I asked 40 of their MBA students, mostly Thai but some from other Asian markets, to tell me about 3 brands they love and 3 they hate. And why, of course. 

Illustration 1 lists the most common brands listed. Maybe no surprises here. Brands that drive emotion. Maybe there are some you don’t know, or would not have thought of. But for at least one of the participants the idea of forcing a “love/hate” reaction these brands came to mind

ILLUSTRATION 1 

Now note that when people are asked the reasons they love or hate a brand they came up with what seem to me pretty rational and maybe less emotional thoughts. Attributes like quality, or perceived quality failure, value or lack of it, reliability, performance, or it’s failure to perform to expectations. Maybe most interesting is perceptions that a brand reflects personality or ethics or fails to live up to what people see as those things. 

ILLUSTRATION 2

What Did this Teach Me 

Apple is a good case of the paradox of some “love it” others “hate it”. Personally I have often expressed that I don’t hate Apple but I don’t like it. I admire the brand messaging style but don’t like the elitist intent. I can see why others like the design but my own experience found the hardware a completely poor experience. In my little survey Apple is both the most loved AND appears in the hate list. It’s a brand that certainly polarizes. Lovers cite "premium feeling," "cool technology," and lifestyle integration, while haters mention "disloyalty" and "stealing from other companies”. In other words personal reaction drives brand reaction. 

Chinese brand Shein dominates the hate list due to quality issues, environmental concerns, and ethical problems like claimed child labour. Maybe you don’t know but the brand has become both the hottest fast fashion brand in the world in recent years but now also reflects growing public awareness of fast fashion's negative impact. So maybe “hate” by extension of broader category issues. We say we “hate” a brand because it represents something bigger?

People primarily tell us they love brands for quality and value, but hate them when quality declines or prices seem unjustified relative to what they receive. Now is that real love or hate or just emotionally rationalizing behavior? Similarly poor customer service and unreliable performance, especially for service brands like telco TrueMove or Thai Airways generate strong negative emotions and brand hate. HATE ? or more the case that people “love” brands that "represent their personality" or "make them feel good," and “hate” brands that disappoint them or conflict with their values.

One of Australia’s leading research gurus told me earlier this year that he thought brand hate was a misnamed excuse for attaching a human quality to brand preference. Which of course is what branding is all about. A brand is an emotion is one of the golden rules I was taught in my early days as an advertising strategist. But maybe a brand lacks the deep emotion to draw on hate. Well “consumer brands” anyway. 

Yes, I can think of brands that do indeed drive real hatred. 

Brand like “nations” have historically and sadly still drive people to terrible actions. Brands that define a real community do the same. I don’t mean the Apple community v say the Microsoft community. Or Coke V Pepsi communities. I mean branded communities where the brand is the heart and soul of the way people think. Nations, tribes, religions. 

Maybe even sports, in the extreme. In most countries I can think of teams that drive amazing and often violent loyalty. Think Yankees V Red Socks? The New Zealand All Blacks define a nations pride. When I lived in Italy long ago I quickly learned if you were not a fan of “the old lady”, Juventas, you had to hate it. Well maybe their fans do “hate” each other. The occasional bar fight would highlight that. If you want an example of real brand hate go to Glasgow where the world’s hardest sporting rivalry lives on. Celtic v Rangers football teams have been hating, rioting, fighting, sadly even killing on rare occasion for a century. Rangers fans are banned from games where the team meet to keep down the violence. 

Yes some brands do drive real hate…physical harming hate. But they do tend to be brands that are extremely tribal where the tribe causes personal loyalties beyond the product or category.

Maybe the classic example this year has been Tesla. Always divisive depending on your view of global warming and prevention but this year people talked of hating the brand in ways we had not seen before. But then it turned out that the vehicle was maybe disliked by some because it had failed to perform as advertised. But the real “hate” was for Elon. Brand as proxy for owner hate. 

Dig deeper … the hate is always something more than the brand performance...there is a personal element. And that is what market research needs to explore.

So here is the thing. When I wrote the “love” article a year ago it was a result of decades of frustration with what seemed to me an over used and generalized term. All those decades of working with research that said that getting people to scale reactions to brands was often hard to explain. BUT what has stood in the ongoing discussion is an awareness that maybe market researchers need to “tone it down”. Don’t report love or hate. Report what is driving reaction.

A little further reading ?? here are 5 about brand hate that I may or may not agree with but do spark some thinking :

1. "Brand hate: a literature review and future research agenda" (Emerald Insight, 2022)

This systematic literature review conducted over two decades (1998-2021) addresses the conceptual confusion in brand hate research due to multiple conceptualizations and models in the field. 

2. "The five types of brand hate: How they affect consumer behavior" (ScienceDirect, 2019)

Drawing from Sternberg's triangular theory of hate, this foundational paper conceptualizes and tests the theory in the branding context, providing a framework for understanding different manifestations of brand hate. 

3. "Brand Hate: A Systematic Literature Review and Future Research Agenda" (International Journal of Consumer Studies, 2022)

This comprehensive review uses the stimulus-organism-response model to analyze peer-reviewed articles and advances a conceptual framework to facilitate understanding of consumers' hatred for brands, shedding light on future research directions. 

4. "Brand hate: a systematic literature review and future perspectives" (Management Review Quarterly, 2024)

This review synthesizes literature from 2009-2022, analyzing 60 peer-reviewed articles to provide a comprehensive overview of brand hate's conceptualization and developmental trajectory, focusing on antecedents and consequences. 

5. "Consumer-brand relationship: A brand hate perspective" (ScienceDirect, 2022)

This study examines an integrated model of antecedents and consequences of brand hate, testing brand constructs like negative brand experience and negative brand personality as antecedents, and brand switching, brand avoidance and complaining as consequences of brand hate.