Shirley (Shuo) Chen

Ironic brand names such as “Liquid Death” and “Surreal Cereal” are increasingly common in the marketplace to compete for consumers’ limited attention. Yet, we know little about their downstream consequences for product inferences. Across experiments, we show that ironic names diminish perceptions of product morality, which in turn lowers perceived health. Importantly, we show that this “irony penalty” holds for virtue products (e.g., smoothies) but is attenuated for vice products (e.g., milkshakes), where moral judgment is less salient and expected. Further, we find that providing diagnostic attribute information on packaging reduces reliance on the name's negative semantics and attenuates the irony penalty. We find that although ironic names seem attention‐grabbing, they do not necessarily translate into purchase intention. Our findings contribute to research on brand naming and health inference by identifying when ironic naming backfires and how firms can mitigate this for products where healthfulness is most salient.

The same dataset can be analysed in different justifiable ways to answer the same research question, potentially challenging the robustness of empirical science1–3. In this crowd initiative, we investigated the degree to which research findings in the social and behavioural sciences are contingent on analysts’ choices. We examined a stratified random sample of 100 studies published between 2009 and 2018, where for one claim per study, at least five re-analysts independently re-analysed the original data. The statistical appropriateness of the re-analyses was assessed in peer evaluations, and the robustness indicators were inspected along a range of research characteristics and study designs. We found that 34% of the independent re-analyses yielded the same result (within a tolerance region of +/- 0.05 Cohen’s d) as the original report; with a four times broader tolerance region, this indicator rose to 57%. Regarding the conclusions drawn, 74% of analyses were reported to arrive at the same conclusion as in the original investigation; 24% to no effects/inconclusive result, and 2% to the opposite effect as in the original investigation. This exploratory study suggests that the common single-path analyses in social and behavioural research should not simply be assumed to be robust to alternative analyses4. Therefore, we recommend the development and use of practices to explore and communicate this neglected source of uncertainty.

Brands are increasingly engaging in brand activism on social media, creating campaigns and taking public stances on social and political issues that sometimes can be divisive (Sarkar and Kotler 2018; Moorman 2020). Due to the division in consumers' stances on these issues, extant research has identified a backlash effect of brand activism. In this study, we examine how brands can communicate and uphold their stances authentically on social media without alienating the consumers who stand opposite to a brand's stance. Building on prior research on brand activism and social media, we examine the impact of using a profile image to advocate a cause on consumers' attitudes toward the brand. In a series of experimental studies and an online field study, we found that advocating for a cause through a change of profile picture can increase brand authenticity and liking without alienating consumers.

This research finds evidence for a plural name advantage on brand attitude. Six studies, including two archival datasets with real market brands and four experiments using fictitious brands, show that brands with plural names (e.g., Dunkin' Donuts) are associated with more favorable brand attitude than brands with singular names (e.g., Dunkin' Donut). This plural brand name advantage is driven by perceptions of brand entitativity emerging from the collective reading of plural entities. However, the positive effect of plural brand names on brand attitude is attenuated in the case of premium brands. This research has practical implications for brand name strategy and makes a theoretical contribution by bringing attention to the under‐researched space of morphology in brand name linguistics.