Negative Emotions Toward a Celebrity Brand a Study on Reasons, Behavioral Outcomes, and Neutralization Actions

Negative Emotions toward a Celebrity Brand A study on reasons, behavioral outcomes, and neutralization actions

MASTER THESIS WITHIN: Business Administration

NUMBER OF CREDITS: 15 Credits

PROGRAM OF STUDY: International Marketing

AUTHORS: Corinna Dahmen and Madeleine Prüfer

JÖNKÖPING May 2020

Master Thesis in Business Administration

Title: Negative Emotions toward a Celebrity Brand – A study on reasons, behavioral outcomes, and neutralization actions Authors: C. M. Dahmen and M. I. Prüfer Tutor: Darko Pantelic Date: 2020-05-18 Key terms: Celebrity Brand, Consumer-Brand-Relationships, Negative Emotions, Behavioral Outcomes, Neutralization Actions, Social Media

Abstract

Background: Social media changed the way of communication between brands and consumers and further enables people to become famous and create their own celebrity brand. Hence, celebrity brands are a new phenomenon, rarely studied by past research but becoming more important in the context of consumer-brand-relationships. Those relationships are similar to interpersonal ones, which are also highly affected by emotions. Negative emotions are perceived to have a higher impact on the relationship and are reflected in consumer behavior, for example, in avoiding the brand. Purpose: Besides the behavioral outcomes of negative emotions toward celebrity brands, the study strives to examine the reasons for negative emotions. Additionally, the purpose of the study is to investigate possible neutralization actions that celebrity brands can undertake to alleviate the negative emotions of consumers. Method: The study followed an exploratory research design. The qualitative data collection was done by conducting semi-structured interviews. Participants were selected based on the criterion of having negative emotions toward a celebrity brand and using social media. In total, 16 interviews were conducted. Conclusion: Negative emotions were either elicited by characteristics or behaviors of the celebrity. Whereas characteristics, e.g. attractiveness, are difficult to influence for celebrities, unfavorable behaviors, e.g. greed and violence, that trigger negative consumer emotions are preventable by the celebrities. The consumers start avoiding, unfollowing, and spreading negative word-of-mouth about the celebrity if they feel negatively toward the brand. To neutralize negative emotions, the celebrity brands are recommended to engage in building authenticity, trust, acceptance, attachment, and adding value to society. However, due to the consumers unfollowing the celebrity, the biggest challenge for celebrity brands is to address neutralization actions in a noticeable way for consumers.

Acknowledgments

A special thanks goes to our supervisor Darko Pantelic for his valuable guidance and provision of critical feedback throughout this thesis. Even in the challenging times of the Corona Virus, he has always put in all efforts to support us and make the best out of the situation.

We would also like to thank our seminar partners Jean Ragg and Philipp Sieben for a continu- ous exchange on our master theses and for giving us valuable points of consideration.

Lastly, we would like to express our appreciation toward the participants of our interviews who not only took the time but also openly shared their negative emotions and opinions toward celebrities with us.

Thank you very much.

Corinna Dahmen and Madeleine Prüfer

III

Table of Contents

Figures ...... VI Tables ...... VI Appendices ...... VI Thesaurus ...... VII 1. Introduction ...... 1 1.1 Purpose of Research ...... 2 1.2 Research Questions ...... 3 1.3 Methodology ...... 4 1.4 Limitations and Delimitations...... 4 1.5 Contribution ...... 5 2. Theoretical Frame ...... 6 2.1 Consumer-Brand-Relationships ...... 6 2.2 Aspects of Celebrity Brands ...... 9 2.2.1 Definition of Celebrities ...... 9 2.2.2 Definition of Celebrity Brands ...... 9 2.2.3 How Celebrities constitute as a Brand ...... 12 2.2.4 Social Media and Celebrity Brands ...... 13 2.3 Brand Strengthening as Neutralization Actions ...... 14 2.3.1 Need for Neutralization Actions ...... 14 2.3.2 Brand Strengthening Factors ...... 16 2.4 Deduction of the Research Questions ...... 18 3. Methodology ...... 21 3.1 Research Philosophy ...... 21 3.2 Research Approach ...... 22 3.3 Research Design ...... 23 3.4 Research Method ...... 24 3.5 Data Collection ...... 25 3.6 Sampling ...... 27 3.7 Research Ethics ...... 28 3.8 Research Quality ...... 28 3.9 Data Analysis ...... 30 4. Findings and Discussion ...... 33 4.1 Participant Overview ...... 33

4.2 Following Celebrities on Social Media ...... 34 4.3 Negative Emotions toward Celebrities ...... 35 4.3.1 Personal Characteristics as Reasons for Negative Emotions...... 36 4.3.2 Behavioral Reasons for Negative Emotions ...... 37 4.3.3 Description of Negative Emotions ...... 40 4.4 Behavioral Outcomes ...... 41 4.4.1 Content Consumption of the Celebrities ...... 41 4.4.2 Behavioral Outcomes from Negative Emotions toward the Celebrity ...... 43 4.5 Motivational Drivers of the Behavioral Outcomes ...... 47 4.6 Neutralization Actions ...... 49 5. Conclusion ...... 55 5.1 Response to the Research Questions ...... 55 5.2 Managerial Implications ...... 57 5.3 Limitations and Delimitations...... 59 5.4 Future Research ...... 61 References ...... 63 Appendices ...... 72

Figures

Figure 1. Model Brand Relationship Quality (BRQ) ...... 6 Figure 2. Overview of Research Purpose ...... 23 Figure 3. Personal Characteristics as Reasons for Negative Emotions ...... 37 Figure 4. Behavioral Reasons for Negative Emotions ...... 39 Figure 5. Identified Categories for Neutralization Actions ...... 53

Tables

Table 1. Overview of celebrity brand characteristics defined by researchers ...... 11 Table 2. Participant Overview ...... 34

Appendices

Appendix 1. Interview Guide ...... 72 Appendix 2. Categories for Data Analysis ...... 73 Appendix 3. Cohen's Kappa ...... 73

Thesaurus

Authenticity: In the case of celebrity brands authenticity describes “the perception that a celebrity behaves according to his or her true self” (Moulard et al., 2015, p. 175).

Attachment: “The intensity of a person’s target-specific emotional bond with a human brand” (Thomson, 2006).

Brand: A brand is “what a company sells, what a company does, and what a company is” (Davis, 2000, p. 4).

Brand Avoidance: Is a concept introduced by Lee, Motion, et al. (2009). Brand avoidance is defined as the “phenomenon whereby consumers deliberately choose to keep away from or reject a brand” (Lee, Conroy, et al., 2009, p. 422).

Brand Hate: Brand hate as a concept describes the emotional extent to which a brand is hated. Fetscherin (2019) and Zarantonello et al. (2016) quantitatively investigated the emotional components of brand hate, e.g. contempt, fear, disgust, and anger. According to Fetscherin (2019), five types of brand hate exist: cool, simmering, burning, boiling, and hot hate. These types differently affect behavioral outcomes, e.g. burning hate results in public complaining and brand revenge (Fetscherin, 2019).

Celebrity: A human being who is considered famous within his or her community and therefore possesses a certain public perception and recognition as well as influence on his or her target audience.

Celebrity Brand: A well-known individual who uses his or her fame for marketing and communication efforts in order to build brand properties connected to his or her person (Lunardo et al., 2015; Moulard et al., 2015; Seno & Lukas, 2007; Thomson, 2006).

PATH: Davis (2000) identified four characteristics which constitute a strong corporate brand. These four characteristics are promise, acceptance, trust, and hope – short PATH.

Triangular Theory of Hate: Sternberg`s (2003) theory states that “hate has multiple components that can manifest themselves in different ways on different occasions” (p. 306). Thus, hate is a construct based on different emotions, which are disgust, contempt, and anger (Fetscherin, 2019).

VII

1. Introduction

Consumer-brand-relationships have been extensively studied throughout the last decades. How- ever, with the help of modern media, the communication between brands and their consumers and therefore also the intensity of the relationships between them, has changed significantly (Kowalczyk & Pounders, 2016). Information about brands are available everywhere. Especially social media has enabled companies and consumers to constantly stay in touch. This direct dialogue has led to brands becoming more approachable, even humanized (Kowalczyk & Pounders, 2016). At the same time, social media has helped many individuals to gain public attention and hence obtain a certain level of fame (Johns & English, 2016; Keel & Nataraajan, 2012). For this reason, the classical definition of a celebrity has changed (Keel & Nataraajan, 2012). In this research, the term celebrity includes all human beings who are considered famous within their community and therefore possess a certain public perception and recognition as well as influence on their target audience.

Brands are profiting from the fame and influence of the celebrities for marketing communication purposes by using them to endorse the brand’s products and services. However, recent marketing research has extended the perspective of celebrity endorsement to a form of brand alliance, regarding celebrities as brands themselves (Johns & English, 2016). As celebrities own brand characteristics and strive to build consumer relationships, every celebrity consequently constitutes as a celebrity brand (Centeno & Wang, 2017; Davis, 2000; Thomson, 2006). A celebrity brand therefore describes a celebrity who uses his or her fame for marketing and communication efforts in order to build brand properties connected to his or her person (Lunardo, Gergaud & Livat, 2015; Moulard, Garrity & Rice, 2015; Seno & Lukas, 2007; Thomson, 2006). Thus, celebrities face the same opportunities and challenges as corporate brands. However, extensive research on celebrity brands is lacking greatly as existing articles discussing celebrities as brands are often themed around celebrity endorsement rather than focusing on celebrity brands as an own construct (Halonen-Knight & Hurmerinta, 2010; Seno & Lukas, 2007). Es- pecially studies on celebrity brands regarding consumer-brand-relationships are missing as past research in this field is conducted based on corporate brands.

Moreover, the majority of literature about consumer-brand-relationships focuses on the positive aspects, e.g. brand loyalty or brand love (Bagozzi, Gopinath & Nyer, 1999; Bloemer & Kasper, 1995; Laros & Steenkamp, 2005). The negative forms such as brand avoidance or brand hate, have received less attention although psychological (Hilbig, 2009) as well as neuroscientific

1 studies (Zeki & Romaya, 2008) have shown that negative emotions possess a higher influence on behavior than positive ones. Investigations on negative emotions of consumers toward a celebrity have, similar to the concept of celebrity brands, mostly been conducted in the context of celebrity endorsement. Therefore, the authors identified a research gap in understanding the reasons and behavioral effects of negative emotions of consumers toward a celebrity brand.

1.1 Purpose of Research

Using celebrities to promote a product is a common and still widely used marketing strategy (Um, 2013). Celebrity endorsement has the positive effect of creating brand awareness, establishing positive attitudes toward a brand through celebrity identification and of course, financial impacts by increased sales and profits (Agrawal & Kamakura, 1995; Aureliano-Silva, Lopes, Freire & Da Silva, 2015; Bergkvist & Zhou, 2016; Erdogan, 1999; Miciak & Shanklin, 1994; Thomson, 2006; Wei & Lu, 2013). The success of celebrity endorsement lies within the strong bonds consumers form with celebrities such as fandom (Leets, De Becker & Giles, 1995), celebrity worship (Dietz et al., 1991), and idolatry (Houran, Navik & Zerrusen, 2005). These bonds are mainly based on attachment (Thomson, 2006), which is defined as “the intensity of a person’s target-specific emotional bond with a human brand” (Thomson, 2006, p. 105). The main underlying influential factor here are emotions. The same applies to the brand context. Consumer behavior is irrational when it derives from emotional bonding to a brand, e.g. through loyalty (Oliver, 1999). With a strong relationship and emotional bond with a brand, love and hate become closer to each other (Kucuk, 2008). Oftentimes, the most loved brands are also the most hated ones as Kucuk (2008) calls this phenomenon “negative double jeopardy”. This can be observed among celebrity brands as well, for example, the Kardashians who are polarizing people by their actions and appearance (Harris, 2016).

Negative emotions such as hate, dislike or anger, toward a brand can manifest in behavioral actions which are unbeneficial for the brand. Such negative consumer behaviors include the deliberate rejection or avoidance of the concerned brand, or even further, public demonstration of the brand rejection (Bryson, Atwal & Hultén, 2013), e.g. public complaining (Fetscherin, 2019). These behavioral outcomes might be triggered by negative experiences with the brand, service failure or moral clashes (Lee, Conroy & Motion, 2009; Zhou & Whitla, 2013). As discussed above, consumer-brand-relationships are generally researched for traditional corporate brands. Hence, it is unknown if the reasons and behavioral outcomes of negative emotions of

2 consumers toward a celebrity brand are the same or similar to the ones already identified by past studies. Some causes such as celebrity scandals, might be evident. Others, however, are less apparent and thus celebrities might be unaware of them.

1.2 Research Questions

The research strives to extend past studies on consumer-brand-relationships to celebrity brands with a focus on negative forms. The goal of the study is to provide celebrities with valuable insights into the reasons for negative emotions developed toward their brand, in which behaviors these emotions manifest, and which actions celebrities can undertake to counterfeit those emotions. Therefore, the present study is divided into three research questions.

RQ1. What are the reasons for negative emotions toward celebrity brands?

Relationships between celebrities and consumers are implicitly led by emotions. A high level of attachment can lead to idolatry and even celebrity worshipping (Dietz et al., 1991; Houran et al., 2005). However, the factors strengthening the attachment can, at the same time, be reasons for developing negative emotions toward the celebrity if they are not satisfied. Thus, missing identification with the celebrity or perceived lack of expertise might be possible explana- tions as well as other causing factors identified in the brand avoidance context (Lee, Motion & Conroy, 2009). Some events or behaviors of celebrities are rather obvious to elicit negative emotions, whereas others are more disguised. The study therefore aims to shed light on these causes and hence create a better understanding of reasons for negative consumer emotions.

RQ2. What behavioral outcomes derive from negative emotions toward celebrity brands?

The behavioral outcomes of negative emotions toward corporate brands are known; for instance, public complaining, engaging in anti-branding websites, and brand switching (Fetscherin, 2019). However, it is not clear if those behavioral outcomes also derive from negative emotions toward celebrity brands. As in the context of celebrity endorsement, negative publicity affected consumers to perceive the brand less favorable, which impacts their purchase decision (Ahluwalia, Burnkrant & Unnava, 2000; Edwards & La Ferle, 2009; Louie, Kulik & Jacobson, 2001). Thus, similar reactions such as avoiding everything connected to the celebrity are presumable for celebrity brands as well. Though other behavioral outcomes, especially in the context of social media might be explored.

RQ3. What can the celebrity brand do to neutralize the negative emotions toward its brand?

A strong relationship between consumers and celebrities is established, for example, by a high level of attachment (Thomson, 2006). Further, trust, hope, acceptance, and promise, strengthen the power of a brand (Davis, 2000) as well as authenticity (Moulard et al., 2015). If these factors are not satisfied, the brand is weakened. However, it is not known if strengthening these factors conversely alleviates negative emotions. Further, it is presumable that additional actions exist which the celebrity brand can undertake to neutralize negative emotions.

1.3 Methodology

One research aim is to explore how celebrities can neutralize negative emotions toward their brand. Thus, interpretivism constitutes as research philosophy and an abductive research approach is used. Abduction refers to the inductive collection of data which will be connected to theoretical assumptions (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2016).

The data was collected qualitatively through semi-structured interviews with participants who were selected based on criterion sampling (Bryman & Bell, 2015). The participants were required to have some sort of negative relationship with a celebrity and were recruited by analyzing negative statements online about a celebrity. Further, snowball sampling was used to reach a larger sample.

Upfront, two test interviews were conducted to avoid possible interview bias and to review the interview guide in terms of missing or misleading questions. Finally, data was gathered on 15 celebrity brands, including singers, reality stars, a comedian, a moderator, an author, and athletes through a total of 16 conducted interviews.

1.4 Limitations and Delimitations

The limitations and delimitations of this study should be considered. Whereas past research investigated consumer-brand-relationships regarding corporate brands, only little research was done on celebrity brands. Hence, past research findings regarding corporate brands were de- duced in the context of celebrity brands and further discussed. Moreover, the research is delim- ited to negative emotions toward celebrity brands and positive emotions are not considered.

By selecting the participants based on negative statements toward a celebrity on social media, the sample was limited to social media users and consequently a certain age range (15-30 years old) which represents the biggest group of social media users (Statista, 2015). Although the interviewer conducted the interviews mainly in their native language German, translation of the findings was done into English and hence finer nuances might have got lost while translating. Further, no restrictions were done to the type of celebrity or its occupation which makes findings less specifically applicable to a certain group of celebrity brands but allows to get deeper insights into negative emotions and neutralization actions.

Future research should try to determine the extent and relations of the findings of this study to draw more generalizable conclusions which consequently benefit more celebrity brands.

1.5 Contribution

Celebrities face the same risks and challenges as corporate brands such as damage to their reputation or a decrease in sales. As the consumers are at the center of every brand (Davis, 2000), it is especially interesting for celebrity brands to find out what drives consumers to develop negative emotions toward them. Although the identified characteristic reasons are difficult to control by celebrities, they can influence the behavioral reasons such as inauthenticity or immoral behavior. Therefore, the present study supplies celebrities with valuable insights on negative consumer emotions. However, the findings do not only provide an understanding of the negative emotions and the reasons for them, but also investigate the corresponding behavioral outcomes, e.g. avoidance or unfollowing. Moreover, concrete neutralization actions are established which present a guideline for celebrity brands to help to alleviate negative consumer emotions as well as to prevent their development in the first place. In this way, possible damages to the celebrity brand can be reduced.

2. Theoretical Frame

This chapter provides an introduction into consumer-brand-relationships and the factors influencing their quality. One of these factors is emotion. As emotions can be positive and negative, there exist positive and negative types of consumer-brand-relationships. However, the focus of this research is on negative emotions and the new phenomenon of celebrity brands which has gained importance due to social media. To investigate the reasons for negative emotions in consumer relationships with celebrity brands and their behavioral outcomes, celebrities and celebrity brands are defined as well as the role of social media is presented. Finally, the need for neutralization actions and factors strengthening a brand are described.

2.1 Consumer-Brand-Relationships

Just like a relationship between humans, a person can develop a relationship with a brand. In the following, consumer-brand-relationships will be examined, presenting their parallels to human bonds. Therefore, factors influencing the quality of brand relationships as well as their underlying driving forces – cognition, behavior, and emotion – will be discussed. As emotions play a key role in consumer-brand-relationships, the focus will be on research done in this field, resulting in a discussion about the positive and negative types of consumer-brand-relationships.

The metaphor of human relationships was used to transfer knowledge about human relationships to consumer-brand- relationships (Breivik & Thorbjørnsen, 2008). Thus, qualities existing in a human relationship are assumed to exist in consumer-brand-relationships (Breivik & Thor- bjørnsen, 2008; Fournier, 1998). According to Fournier (1998), several factors (see Figure 1) influence the relationship quality.

Figure 1. Model Brand Relationship Quality (BRQ) [According to Fournier, 1998]

Whereas some factors are cognitively driven, e.g. intimacy and brand partner quality, others are based on behavioral relations, e.g. commitment and interdependence (Fournier, 1998). Lastly, emotional aspects exist which are represented in the BRQ Model by love/passion and self-connection (Fournier, 1998). These emotional factors were studied by several researchers, for instance, Fetscherin (2019), Fournier (1998), Zarantonello, Romani, Grappi and Bagozzi (2016), and Carroll and Ahuvia (2006).

Positive emotions range from sympathy, desire, hope, and fascination to relief or satisfaction (Desmet, 2012). Generally, positive emotions lead to higher purchasing intentions, repurchases, and attachment (Desmet, 2012). Especially, attachment is a fundamental factor of consumer- brand-relationships. “Consumer’s emotional attachments to a brand might predict their commitment to the brand … and their willingness to make financial sacrifices in order to obtain it” (Thomson, Macinnis & Whan Park, 2005, p. 77). Thus, emotional attachment plays a significant role in the context of branding and maintaining loyal customers as well as avoiding brand switching (Grisaffe & Nguyen, 2011). For marketers, positive emotions are desirable as brands profit from the above-mentioned outcomes, namely: higher purchases, attachment, and loyalty.

Focusing on positive consumer-brand-relationships, theories of brand love (Carroll & Ahu- via, 2006), brand commitment (Warrington & Shim, 2000), brand loyalty, and brand passion (Albert, Merunka & Valette-Florence, 2013) have been developed. They strive to extend the research on satisfaction and involvement, which is predominantly based on cognitive information processing (Carroll & Ahuvia, 2006; Warrington & Shim, 2000). According to Fournier (1998), brand loyalty theories intend to examine how to strengthen consumer-brand-relationships to efficiently maintain them and are focused on the behavioral outcome of repurchases (Warrington & Shim, 2000). Brand commitment and brand passion include loyalty as well, but rather focus on the attitudinal perspective of a consumer who will not change the brand just because it is unavailable (Warrington & Shim, 2000). Committed and passionate consumers stay loyal, even though a brand might be sold-out for a moment (Warrington & Shim, 2000). The concept of brand love (Carroll & Ahuvia, 2006), moreover, extends the studies of brand relationships, loyalty, and passion. It underlines the similarity between interpersonal and brand love. Brand love arises to the extent that consumers are willing to admit “I love this brand” (Carroll & Ahuvia, 2006).

However, not only positive emotions and brand attachment exist. Love, passion, trust, and other positive emotions can also turn into negative ones. Generally, negative emotions seem to have a higher influence on behavior than positive ones (Fournier & Alvarez, 2013; Hilbig, 2009; 7

Zeki & Romaya, 2008). Therefore, negative emotions toward brands have gained the interest of researchers recently.

Romani, Sadeh and Dalli (2009) find that dislike and anger are the main negative feelings toward brands. They elicit from identification or experiential issues with the brand as the brand is either seen as a physical object, e.g. a product or a symbolic cultural object, where the consumer cannot identify with the brand values (Romani et al., 2009). However, not only direct brand experiences can trigger negative emotions, but also brand-related stimuli. Brand-related stimuli are used as an umbrella term for marketing communications led by the brand, external communications, e.g. word-of-mouth and anti-branding websites, and certain elements, e.g. places and people (Keller, 2003; Romani, Grappi & Dalli, 2012).

To which behavioral outcome those negative emotions can lead is illustrated by the concepts of brand avoidance and brand hate (Fetscherin, 2019; Lee, Motion, et al., 2009). Brand avoidance is defined as the “phenomenon whereby consumers deliberately choose to keep away from or reject a brand” (Lee, Conroy, et al., 2009, p. 422). It can be distinguished into four types: experiential, identity, moral, and deficit-value avoidance (Lee, Conroy, et al., 2009). Nevertheless, consumers need to be able to purchase the brand, precisely, the brand must be available and affordable. Otherwise, the concept of brand avoidance is not applicable (Lee, Motion, et al., 2009). Brand hate describes the most negative emotion toward brands (Bryson et al., 2013). According to Fitness and Fletcher (1993), hate emerges by the perception that the partner – the brand – badly treated, humiliated or did not support the consumer. Brand hate can result in the deliberate intention of rejecting or avoiding a brand, or even further, publicly demonstrate brand rejection (Bryson et al., 2013). Recently, Fetscherin (2019) and Zarantonello et al. (2016) quantitatively investigated the emotional components of brand hate, e.g. contempt, fear, disgust, and anger. Combining those emotions leads to five types of brand hate: cool, simmering, burning, boiling, and hot hate (Fetscherin, 2019). These types differently affect behavioral outcomes, e.g. burning hate results in public complaining and brand revenge (Fetscherin, 2019).

Negative emotions are harmful to brands. Therefore, considering how negative emotions arise, which negative emotions are predominant in consumer-brand-relationships, and how they influence consumer behavior is important. At its best, negative emotions should never be triggered by any brand-related stimuli.

2.2 Aspects of Celebrity Brands

After describing how consumer-brand-relationships can take on positive or negative forms, the next building block of the present research is going to be introduced. Past research on consumer- brand-relationships has been conducted using corporate brands such as Coca-Cola or Apple. The purpose of this thesis is to explore, which factors can be identified in the context of relationships between consumers and celebrity brands. Therefore, the terms celebrity and celebrity brand will be defined in the following chapter. Moreover, the characteristics of corporate brands, how they apply to celebrity brands, and how celebrity brands are different from celebrity endorsement is going to be outlined. Finally, social media as a main communication channel between celebrities and their consumers will be described.

2.2.1 Definition of Celebrities

“In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes”; this quote by Andy Warhol (1968) may have seemed unbelievable at the time but has become more and more true in the modern times of the internet and social media. YouTube, Instagram, blogs, reality TV, casting shows, and similar have helped ordinary people to become famous – at least for a short period of time (Keel & Nataraajan, 2012). They are celebrated by the public and labeled as internet stars resulting in the fact that the term celebrity has become quite ambiguous (Keel & Nataraa- jan, 2012).

For Boorstin (1992) “well-knowness” is enough to qualify someone as a celebrity. Thus, people from all walks of life are included, e.g. actors, athletes, politicians, chefs, royalty as well as the above-stated online stars. However, Keel and Nataraajan (2012) argue that the latter are only considered as a celebrity by their fans and not by someone outside that community. The same applies to animated characters such as Shrek or Mickey Mouse which children may consider as celebrities, too (Keel & Nataraajan, 2012; Pringle, 2004). For this reason, creating a definition of the term celebrity is rather difficult. Hunter (2009) kept Boorstin’s well-knowness characteristic and extended it in his definition of a celebrity, which is “an individual who is well known to the public for their well-knowness and has an impact on public consciousness” (Hunter, 2009, p. 22). Similar to this, is the definition of Freire, Quevedo-Silva, Senise and Scrivano (2018) who identify a celebrity as “a person who is recognized by the public and considered to be a role model for society, due to his or her professional competence or beauty” (Freire et al., 2018,

9 p. 291). Therefore, a celebrity must be famous in the public eye and have some sort of influence on or importance to society.

However, as discussed before, fame is interpreted subjectively. Furthermore, the marketing context of this study needs to be considered as well. For these reasons, the definition of Pringle (2004) is found to be fitting. It states that a celebrity is “anyone who is familiar enough to the people a brand wishes to communicate with to add values to that communication by association with their image and reputation” (Pringle, 2004, p. XXIV). The emphasis here is on being “familiar enough” to your target audience. Concluding from these definitions, for the present purposes a celebrity is defined as a human being who is considered famous within his or her community and therefore possesses a certain public perception and recognition as well as influence on his or her target audience.

2.2.2 Definition of Celebrity Brands

Several researchers have investigated celebrities as a brand (Centeno & Wang, 2017; Johns & English, 2016; Kowalczyk & Pounders, 2016; Moulard et al., 2015). As discussed before, many people are nowadays considered as celebrities and therefore establishing a brand, helps to differentiate oneself and stand out from the crowd as well as being recognized immediately (Lu- nardo et al., 2015). Interestingly, there exists no unified name for this phenomenon, but several different ones have been used – namely human brand, person brand, and celebrity brand. Table 1 gives an overview of some articles discussing celebrities as brands, which term is used in the article and which characteristics are stated for defining the term.

Table 1. Overview of celebrity brand characteristics defined by researchers

Article Term used Defining characteristics Thomson (2006) Human brand − Well-known − Involved in marketing communication efforts Lunardo et al. (2015) Human brand, − Known by the public person brand − Competing to differentiate themselves from competitors − Subject of marketing, interpersonal or inter-organizational communications Centeno & Wang Human brand − Performed activities of celebrities are (2017) following marketing and branding purposes − Life choices and values are publicly known Johns & English (2016) Celebrity brand − Celebrities build a brand through identity discourses − Fabricate an authentic and credible persona − Develop relationships with consumers which can impact purchase decisions Moulard et al. (2015) Human brand, − Celebrities have a high influence on celebrity brand public − Own self-branded business ventures which generate high profits − Consumers’ attitudes toward them need to be managed Kowalczyk & Pounders Human brand − Celebrities engage online with con- (2016) sumers, manage the associations drawn to them, and control their persona

During the research, it was discovered that the term human brand is also used in the context of brand anthropomorphism, referring to a corporate brand with humanlike characteristics (Malone & Fiske, 2013; Portal, Abratt & Bendixen, 2018). Therefore, the authors have decided to follow the study of Johns and English (2016) and use the term celebrity brand in the present thesis. After reviewing the articles and deciding on a term, the following definition for celebrity brand was established: a well-known individual who uses his or her fame for marketing and communication efforts in order to build brand properties connected to his or her person (Lunardo et al., 2015; Moulard et al., 2015; Seno & Lukas, 2007; Thomson, 2006).

2.2.3 How Celebrities constitute as a Brand

To further understand how celebrities can constitute as a brand, the characteristics of corporate brands are going to be discussed and applied to celebrities. Moreover, the distinction between a celebrity brand and celebrity endorsement is going to be made clear.

The power of a brand cannot be underestimated. For some of the most valuable global companies, more than half of their corporate value derives from their brand (Chong, 2007). Generally, a brand is “what a company sells, what a company does, and what a company is” (Davis, 2000, p. 4). Establishing a strong brand brings many important benefits. Usually, the customer forms a relationship with the brand rather than with the products or services of the company (Davis, 2000). It is important that the coffee is from Starbucks although it might taste the same as the coffee in any other coffee shop. Branding influences customer choice and helps a firm to differentiate itself from its competitors and maximize its financial returns (Chong, 2007; Davis, 2000). A company that has succeeded in establishing a strong brand is immediately recognized worldwide and has managed to create a unique positioning in the minds of the consumers (Da- vis, 2000; Harmer, 2004). The world’s leading corporate brands each have specific associations drawn to them, e.g. Coca-Cola stands for happiness and individual performance is connected to Nike (Davis, 2000). Besides customers, a strong brand also attracts other stakeholders such as employees, business partners, and investors (Chong, 2007).

Similar to corporate brands, a celebrity benefits from brand building as well. Although a celebrity brand is represented by a human, it is a manufactured construct and needs to be carefully managed (Kowalczyk & Pounders, 2016; Lunardo et al., 2015). Celebrities even employ a brand manager or publicist for this task (Kowalczyk & Pounders, 2016), especially if their fan base is too large to be managed by themselves. Brand features or properties such as reputation, credibility, and image apply for celebrities as well (Seno & Lukas, 2007; Thomson, 2006). These brand properties are created by manufacturing a persona (Johns & English, 2016). Hence, the established persona of the celebrity represents their brand or to repeat the above- mentioned definition of a brand, it is what the celebrity sells, what the celebrity does, and what the celebrity is. Just like for corporate brands, a strong brand helps celebrities to create a unique positioning which differentiates them from other celebrities. For example, Kylie Jen- ner has successfully positioned herself as a beauty guru. All activities performed by her – re- gardless of in public or private – are following marketing and branding purposes (Centeno & Wang, 2017).

A celebrity brand therefore comprises more than just celebrity endorsement. Celebrity endorsement describes a marketing communication technique in which a celebrity advertises a product or service in order to add value to the good and its brand (Amos, Holmes & Strutton, 2008). This is done, by transferring positive attributes associated with the celebrity, e.g. likeability or trustworthiness, to the company, brand or good (Amos et al., 2008; Erdogan, 1999). The goal is, to create awareness, liking, and the desire to purchase the endorsed product or service within consumers (Knoll & Matthes, 2017). In this way, corporate brands can make use of celebrities by hiring them to endorse their products and services. Of course, celebrities can also endorse their own products, nevertheless, endorsement is restricted to advertisement. Therefore, celebrity endorsement differentiates from a celebrity brand as it only includes what a celebrity sells and not also what the celebrity does and is.

2.2.4 Social Media and Celebrity Brands

Particularly in the modern times of extensive media obtrusiveness, information about celebrities are available everywhere (Zhou & Whitla, 2013). However, before social media existed, consumers only received information about celebrities via traditional media such as magazines or television, which made them passive audience members (Kowalczyk & Pounders, 2016). Through social media platforms, e.g. Instagram or Twitter, this indirect, one-way communication has changed into a direct, two-way one (Kowalczyk & Pounders, 2016). In this way, brands are humanized, and celebrities become more approachable (Kowalczyk & Pounders, 2016). Moreover, on social media celebrities can take ownership of their image by posting information about themselves on their social media pages at any time. Further, consumers can then leave “likes” or comments on these posts or even send them a private message making them feel close and connected to the celebrity (Kowalczyk & Pounders, 2016). Sometimes, celebrities even respond to their fans online, promoting consumer engagement and emotional attachment. In this way, they can control and further develop their brand.

Nevertheless, social media also comes with a risk and great responsibility for the celebrities. Consumers are not only interested in career-related information, but also personal stories which create authenticity (Kowalczyk & Pounders, 2016). Keeping fans updated and trying to engage with them can be quite time consuming, especially when the celebrity has a large fan base. However, using a ghostwriter for the handling of the celebrity’s social media channels might lead to severe damages to the celebrity’s perceived sincerity (Kowalczyk & Pounders, 2016).

Consumer disengagement and the spread of negative word-of-mouth (WOM) might be the result (Kowalczyk & Pounders, 2016). Further backlashes might occur when the celebrity is posting a controversial statement or is involving in a sensitive topic (Kowalczyk & Pounders, 2016). For this reason, celebrities must be aware that they are not only judged for their work, but also many other things and that social media can be a powerful tool for brand building, but can also create great damage to it (Izadi, 2017).

To summarize, the traditional concepts of celebrity and celebrity endorsement have been ex- panded to celebrity brands. By establishing brand properties such as a certain image or reputation, celebrities are striving for uniqueness and popularity. Social media further helps them to create a personal dialogue with their consumers, but also bears risks for encountering resent- ment.

2.3 Brand Strengthening as Neutralization Actions

So far, a clear understanding of consumer-brand-relationships and celebrity brands has been established. As mentioned before, social media and in general, the behavior and perception of a celebrity can greatly harm but also support his/her brand-building activities. One aim of the present research is to develop neutralization actions which positively impact these emotions and behaviors. For this purpose, the following chapter elaborates on negative emotions which consumers can have toward a celebrity brand. In order to cope with these negative emotions and their possible negative impacts on the celebrity, factors for brand strengthening and their implementation as neutralization actions will be discussed.

2.3.1 Need for Neutralization Actions

As previously mentioned, consumer-brand-relationships exist in negative forms. Whereas researchers studied negative emotions toward corporate brands (Bryson et al., 2013; Fetscherin, 2019; Kucuk, 2019; Lee, Motion, et al., 2009; Zarantonello et al., 2016), research on negative emotions toward celebrity brands lacks. To argue for a need for neutralization actions for celebrity brands, findings of celebrity endorsement studies as well as negative emotions toward corporate brands and the behavioral outcomes of these emotions are further explained within this chapter.

Celebrity endorsement has the positive effect of creating brand awareness, establishing positive attitudes toward a brand through celebrity identification and of course, financial impacts by increased sales and profits (Agrawal & Kamakura, 1995; Aureliano-Silva et al., 2015; Bergkvist & Zhou, 2016; Erdogan, 1999; Miciak & Shanklin, 1994; Thomson, 2006; Wei & Lu, 2013). However, it has been examined that marketers put their brand at risk when using celebrity endorsers (Um, 2013). Several examples of negative publicity for a brand and company by celebrities’ transgressions exist (Louie et al., 2001; Moulard et al., 2015). Some researchers found that factors such as culture, gender, and identification with the celebrity influence consumer’s brand perceptions after receiving negative information about the celebrity (Ahluwalia et al., 2000; Edwards & La Ferle, 2009; Um & Lee, 2015). Moreover, the moral reputation of celebrities has a substantial influence on their endorsements, especially in terms of likability and trustworthiness (Zhou & Whitla, 2013). The identification and moral factors match with the concept of brand avoidance, especially identification and moral brand avoidance (Lee, Conroy, et al., 2009). Further, Louie et al. (2001) found negative publicity of a brand endorser to cause negative financial impacts for a company by using stock returns as a financial performance indicator. However, also more characteristic attributes of the celebrity can influence the affection for celebrities, namely attractiveness, expertise, and credibility (Freire et al., 2018; Um, 2013). A celebrity’s physical appearance represents the factor attractiveness, whereas expertise is expressed through the celebrity’s knowledge on a certain topic that the celebrity deals with (Um, 2013). Credibility refers to the trustworthiness and hence honesty of the celebrity toward his/her audience (Um, 2013).

In the case of celebrity brands, the celebrity itself is one entity with the brand (Freire et al., 2018). Based on the literature of celebrity endorsement (Ahluwalia et al., 2000; Edwards & La Ferle, 2009; Louie et al., 2001), it is presumable that negative emotions toward the celebrity are consequently reflected on the celebrity brand. Hence, theories of negative interpersonal relationships can be considered to further elaborate emotions toward brands and consumer reactions based on those emotions. Specifically, Sternberg’s (2003) triangular theory of hate is commonly used as an underlying theoretical model for concepts of negative consumer-brand-relationships. It states that “hate has multiple components that can manifest themselves in different ways on different occasions” (Sternberg, 2003, p. 306). Thus, hate is not one single emotion but a construct comprising three different emotions which are disgust, contempt, and anger (Fetscherin, 2019).

Bougie, Pieters and Zeelenberg (2003) examined the reactions of angry people who think of violence and unfairness. Further, they consider complaining and behaving nasty as well as ag- gressively as reactions of angry people (Bougie et al., 2003; Johnson, Matear & Thomson, 2011; Romani, Grappi & Bagozzi, 2013). Anger is triggered by an unfair event and if high relevancy for the person is given (Bougie et al., 2003; Johnson et al., 2011; Nyer, 1997).

Contempt is a frequently occurring emotion in psychological far distant relationships toward brands which are defined by the perceived self-irrelevance of brand associations (Park, Eisingerich & Park, 2013). It leads to punishing the brand by avoiding it (Romani et al., 2013). Compared to anger, it might be the higher punishment for the brand as angry customers still interact with the brand instead of avoiding it completely (Romani et al., 2013).

One of the most basic human emotion is disgust (Dens, De Pelsmacker & Janssens, 2008; Romani et al., 2012). It is even used in advertisements to reach awareness, which is especially effective for new brands (Dens et al., 2008). However, it leads to a negative attitude toward the brand (Dens et al., 2008).

The findings of celebrity endorsement studies, that moral reputation and identification issues can lead to negative perceptions of the celebrity, are presumably also valid for celebrity brands. Further, the above-mentioned emotions might be outcomes of the reasons for negative perceptions. These emotions then lead to avoiding and complaining behavior (Bougie et al., 2013; Romani et al., 2013) which is not desirable for celebrity brands. Thus, it is particularly interesting how these emotions can be neutralized by establishing a strong celebrity brand in order to minimize the spread of negative WOM and consumers avoiding the celebrity brand.

2.3.2 Brand Strengthening Factors

Companies’ most important asset are their brands (Davis, 2000). By maximizing the power of its brand, a firm maximizes its consumer-brand-relationships which drive the growth and financial returns of the company (Davis, 2000). Hence, a strong brand is key for establishing positive relationships such as brand loyalty or brand love. Thus, factors which strengthen a brand should consequently have a positive impact on negative consumer-brand-relationships as well. There- fore, brand strengthening factors are taken from the corporate brand context and are applied to celebrity brands in order to help celebrities in creating a successful brand as well as serving as the basis for neutralization actions.

Davis (2000) identified four characteristics which form a strong corporate brand. These four characteristics are promise, acceptance, trust, and hope – short PATH. They are intangible, oftentimes emotional assets, which are at the core of what makes a brand successful. In order to illustrate this, Davis (2000) used Mercedes as an example. Consumers are not only purchasing a car from Mercedes but also the promise of a well-engineered and high-level comfort au- tomobile, which makes them part of the Mercedes community as well as signaling prestige and prosperity to their surroundings. Furthermore, consumers trust that a Mercedes car is durable and reliable as well as hope that it is stable in price leading to a low depreciation. In this way, the brand Mercedes stands for a lot more than just cars. PATH helps them to not only differentiate themselves from their competitors but to be perceived as more valuable in the minds of the consumers (Davis, 2000).

PATH is especially relevant for celebrity brands as they rely even more on intangible and emotional assets. Their public perception and reputation are crucial for them in terms of likeability and trustworthiness and therefore success (Zhou & Whitla, 2013). As the consumer-brand-relationship between the consumer and the celebrity is comparable with an interpersonal relationship, it can be referred to as research on how to build promise, acceptance, trust, or hope inter- personally. Trust, for example, was found to be established by being open, share influence, delegate, and manage mutual expectations within an interpersonal relationship (Deering & Mur- phy, 1998; Six, 2005). Further, positive signals have to be sent frequently to manifest trust (Six, 2005). The four criteria of PATH are, moreover, related to each other as, for example, acceptance is primarily expressed through affection, which comprises sending messages, e.g. of love or kindness (Floyd, 2016; Rohner & Lansford, 2017). Hence, trust and acceptance are built in similar ways. Furthermore, PATH can help celebrities to build brand equity. Brand equity in this context refers to “biased consumer actions” (Faircloth, Capella & Alford, 2001, p. 62) caused by positive associations connected to the brand (Seno & Lukas, 2007), e.g. choosing one brand over another. Hence, brand equity leads to brand preference and thus higher financial returns. For these reasons, the authors identified the four criteria of PATH to be relevant brand strengthening factors for celebrity brands.

Furthermore, the two criteria attachment and authenticity were identified in past research on celebrity brands to be crucial for their success (Kowalczyk & Pounders, 2016; Moulard et al., 2015; Thomson, 2006). According to Fournier (1998), attachment and love build the basis of a strong consumer-brand-relationship. Attachment in the context of celebrity brands is defined as “the intensity of a person’s target-specific emotional bond with a human brand” (Thomson,

2006, p. 105). A strong attachment to a celebrity brand leads to an increase in consumers’ satisfaction, trust, and commitment toward the celebrity brand (Thomson, 2006). It is built by focusing on people’s basic psychological needs, which are autonomy, relatedness, and competence. They differentiate themselves from other needs by their endurance (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Thomson, 2006). Hence, as in the concept of building trust, consistency and repetition are key for celebrity brands and their interaction with consumers (Beech, Chadwick & Tapp, 2000; Berman & Sperling, 1994).

Furthermore, authenticity in the case of celebrity brands describes “the perception that a celebrity behaves according to his or her true self” (Moulard et al., 2015, p. 175). Rarity and stability are two factors influencing people’s perception of behaving according to the self (Mou- lard et al., 2015). Rarity in this context, refers to holding unique characteristics compared to other celebrities, whereas stability means being steadfast in one’s actions and words (Moulard et al., 2015). Authenticity has a positive influence on consumers’ attitudes toward the celebrity, which leads to favorable behavioral outcomes, e.g. decision making or positive WOM (Moulard et al., 2015; Moulard, Rice, Garrity & Mangus, 2014).

For these reasons, the six brand strengthening factors promise, acceptance, trust, hope, attachment, and authenticity were identified as possible theoretical basis to develop neutralization actions for celebrity brands which face negative consumer emotions toward them. As a strong brand is not only a success factor for corporate but also celebrity brands, establishing and maintaining these brand strengthening factors is of high relevance for them. It is implied that through them, a negative perception of the celebrity and thus undesirable behavioral outcomes of consumers are minimized.

2.4 Deduction of the Research Questions

Consumer-brand-relationships are at the core of marketing. Several different types of these relationships have been identified and examined by researchers in the last decades (Albert et al., 2013; Kucuk, 2019; Lee, Conroy, et al., 2009; Warrington & Shim, 2000). The quality of consumer-brand-relationships can either be cognitive, behavioral, or emotional driven (Fournier, 1998). These researches were done by finding parallels between interpersonal bonds and bonds between a human and a brand (Carroll & Ahuvia, 2006; Zarantonello et al., 2016). Hence, as in human relationships, positive and negative types of consumer-brand-relationships exist. Emo- tions play a key role in these, ranging from brand love to brand hate. In these studies, researchers

18 have matched human emotions to brands. However, as these studies are coming from a social study background, the concept of consumer-brand-relationships should fit even better to celebrity brands, where the brand is represented by a human being and not a corporation. Further- more, in modern times of extensive media coverage, the communication and therefore also the intensity of the relationship between consumers and brands have changed (Kowalczyk & Pounders, 2016). Especially celebrities have benefited from social media to market themselves as their own brand (Johns & English, 2016; Kowalczyk & Pounders, 2016). However, social media does not only bring opportunities for building a strong fan or consumer base but also a great risk of facing negative backlash.

To summarize, the starting point of this study are consumer-brand-relationships which combine social studies and marketing research. As they derive from human relationships, a good fit for celebrity brands is presumed. Through modern media, celebrities are the target of a lot of negative emotions and feedback. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to investigate the negative emotions and behaviors occurring in consumer-brand-relationships regarding celebrity brands and how celebrities should react to these.

For these reasons, the first research question What are the reasons for negative emotions toward celebrity brands? was deducted in order to find out what elicits negative emotions. Past research touched on the reasons for negative emotions toward corporate brands. For instance, the concept of brand avoidance includes several forms of avoidance such as experience avoidance, whereby “experience” indicates the reason for avoidance (Lee, Conroy, et al., 2009). Further, past research investigated attractiveness, credibility, and expertise, as reasons for an attitude change toward celebrities (Freire et al., 2018; Um, 2013). Additionally, which negative emotions toward celebrity brands are triggered by those reasons is examined. For example, in the concept of brand hate, anger, disgust, and contempt were identified as the three predominant emotions (Fetscherin, 2019).

These negative emotions toward corporate brands further can cause negative behavioral outcomes such as private or public complaining (Fetscherin, 2019). The same can be observed in the concept of brand avoidance, in which consumers refuse to purchase products or services from a brand due to negative experiences or opinions about the brand (Lee, Conroy, et al., 2009). However, only behavioral outcomes of negative emotions toward corporate brands have been investigated and the role of social media in terms of consuming celebrity brands is unclear. Hence, the second research question What behavioral outcomes derive from negative emotions

19 toward celebrity brands? was created to identify unfavorable behaviors triggered by negative emotions toward celebrity brands.

Lastly, the third research question What can the celebrity brand do to neutralize the negative emotions toward its brand? was formulated in order to investigate how celebrities can positively impact the relationship with their consumers or fans. Past research identified the factors promise, acceptance, trust, and hope as well as attachment and authenticity to build a strong consumer-brand-relationship (Davis, 2000; Moulard et al., 2015; Thomson, 2006). Though it is not evident if these factors conversely also function as neutralization actions for celebrity brands and which other actions can alleviate negative emotions toward them.

3. Methodology

To answer the three research questions of this thesis, an exploratory research design is used. Further, a qualitative method in the form of interviews was chosen to get deeper insights into participants’ reasons for negative emotions toward celebrities and how they might be alleviated by a behavioral change of the celebrity. The following chapter further describes the data collection process to understand how the research questions will be answered.

3.1 Research Philosophy

The philosophical approach is used to understand why research is conducted and refers to be- liefs about knowledge generation (Saunders et al., 2016). The assumptions made about the nature of realities during this research, support the understanding of the used research methodology, and the findings presented later in this thesis (Crotty, 1998; Saunders et al., 2016).

Major existing philosophies are positivism, critical realism, interpretivism, postmodernism, and pragmatism (Easterby-Smith, 2018; Saunders et al., 2016). In order to know, which philosophy to select, it is important to understand how the world is assumed to be. There are three common notions on assumptions of the world among researchers: ontology, epistemology, and axiology (Easterby-Smith, 2018). Ontology refers to the nature of reality and can be distinguished further into objectivism and subjectivism (Saunders et al., 2016). Epistemology describes what counts as acceptable knowledge in the frame of research (Collis & Hussey, 2014). Objective data might be one epistemological branch but studying attitudes and feelings might be another (Collis & Hussey, 2014). Lastly, axiology deals with the researcher’s values and their role during the research (Collis & Hussey, 2014).

Distinction between the research philosophies can be done based on these assumption con- structs. The stream of positivism includes an objective view of reality (ontology) and the researcher acts independently from the study without taking his values into consideration (axiology; Saunders et al., 2016). Thus, data is collected on large samples to find causalities and to draw generalizations (epistemology; Saunders et al., 2016). Contrary, a subjective view on the reality which is socially constructed is given in the ontological perspective of interpretivism (Saunders et al., 2016). Thus, the researcher and his/her values are part of the research due to the view of the world as a social construct and subjective meanings are studied (Saunders et al., 2016).

As this research aims to explore how celebrities can neutralize negative emotions toward their brand, interpretivism is the selected research philosophy. Research is done among people who have negative emotions toward celebrity brands. Hence, people are the research focus rather than objects and an understanding of the differences of socially acting humans will be gained. Gaining insights into people’s view of the world, meanings, and interpretations is the occurring challenge in interpretivism (Saunders et al., 2016).

As the nature of reality is viewed as a social construct in the case of this research, subjectivism consequently follows as an ontological perspective (Saunders et al., 2016). This research tries to understand the subjective perspective of consumers who have negative emotions toward a celebrity brand. Emotions are implicitly very subjective. Thus, understanding what elicits the negative emotions, what emotions does the person have, and what might help to neutralize those emotions can only be examined by making sense of the person’s subjective thinking.

3.2 Research Approach

Indicating the appropriate research approach for the undertaken study, enables the researchers to structure their research method accordingly to the research questions and to clarify how conclusions will be drawn (Easterby-Smith, 2018). Three research approach streams exist: deductive, inductive, and abductive (Saunders et al., 2016). Deductive is most likely related to the research philosophy of positivism (Saunders et al., 2016). In deduction, theory and research are highly connected to each other as through hypotheses, which are built out of existing theories, a theoretical model will be falsified, verified, or enhanced (Bryman & Bell, 2015; Robson & McCartan, 2016). Conversely, induction indicates that a theory is formed based on collected and analyzed data (Ghauri & Grønhaug, 2010; Saunders et al., 2016). Thus, induction strives to find common patterns in the collected data to draw theoretical conclusions.

Abduction generally is a combination of induction and deduction (Suddaby, 2006). Like an inductive approach, abductive research starts with an observation and collection of data to find common patterns (Saunders et al., 2016). Thus, “abduction assigns primacy to the empirical world, but in the service of theorizing” (Van Maanen, Sorensen & Mitchell, 2007, p. 1149). As this study aims to inductively explore how celebrities can neutralize negative emotions toward their brands and uses theoretical concepts of negative emotions toward brands to cluster the research findings, abduction is the research approach of this study.

Consequently, abduction is followed by a deductive testing of the theoretical conclusions drawn from the abductive approach (Kovács & Spens, 2005; Van Maanen et al., 2007). However, this study focuses on the abductive part only, whereas the testing might be done by future research.

3.3 Research Design

The research design is the general plan of which method and data collection tool will be used to answer the research question (Ghauri & Grønhaug, 2010). To define an appropriate method, the research stream – exploratory, descriptive, or causal – should be set before (Zikmund, Ba- bin, Carr & Griffin, 2010).

Exploratory studies strive to find insights on the studied problem by asking open questions (Saunders et al., 2016). It does not aim to find conclusive results, but rather to get appropriate knowledge about an understudied phenomenon (Ghauri & Grønhaug, 2010; Zikmund et al., 2010). Further, explanatory research allows flexibility and data collection can be spontaneously adjusted if appropriate (Ghauri & Grønhaug, 2010). Descriptive research implicitly focuses on describing objects and/or environments by clarifying the research problem first and then following a structural approach of conducting the study (Ghauri & Grønhaug, 2010; Saunders et al., 2016; Zikmund et al., 2010). Causal research is applied when studying relationships between variables (Saunders et al., 2016).

The appropriate research design for this study is exploratory. The study strives to gain insights into the phenomenon of celebrity brands (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Overview of Research Purpose

Thus, three open research questions were formulated to find insights into the three research areas (see Figure 2). The research questions focus on the following research streams:

1. Reasons for negative emotions toward celebrity brands 2. Behavioral changes driven by negative emotions 3. Neutralization actions that the celebrity can undertake

To answer the research questions, it is important to understand the perspective of consumers who experience negative emotions toward a celebrity. Further, emotions are oppositional to rationality. For one person, moral reasons might be a driver for negative emotions, whereas, for others, identification issues might cause negative emotions. A structural approach with pre- defined answer options might not be appropriate to get insights. Instead, the exploratory research design allows the authors to react to the study’s participants. Flexibility is needed during the data collection to adjust questions and to ask for further explanation in order to better understand the three research aspects (see Figure 2).

3.4 Research Method

Following the identified research philosophy of interpretivism, the research approach of abduction, and the exploratory research design, a qualitative research method is used to answer this study’s research questions. Qualitative research methods enable researchers to study social phe- nomena (Myers, 2020). Thus, its focus is on understanding the participants’ views on the problem rather than testing assumptions (Ghauri & Grønhaug, 2010). Collected data will be conceptualized and interpreted to find commonalities (Ghauri & Grønhaug, 2010).

To answer the research questions of this study, participants were identified to give the researchers insights on their perspective on the negative emotions toward celebrity brands. Thus, data was collected through semi-structured interviews in this study. Generally, interviews can be done in groups or individually (Myers, 2020). As this research does not focus on any specific celebrity brand, individual interviews applied better to collect appropriate data from a participant’s point of view.

Semi-structured interviews allow the researcher to react flexibly during the interview (Myers, 2020). Questions can be added, left out or the order of questions can be changed while inter- viewing the participant. This flexibility is not given in structured interviews (Bryman & Bell, 2015). Still, semi-structured as well as structured interviews have pre-prepared questions and

24 hence guidance through the topic (Easterby-Smith, 2018). Concluding, individual semi-structured interviews were the research method in this study.

3.5 Data Collection

In this research, primary and secondary data was collected. An extensive literature review was conducted in order to establish the theoretical framework of the study as well as for the formu- lation of the research problem and purpose. Based on the information collected via secondary sources, semi-structured interviews, as mentioned before, were chosen to constitute as a tool for the primary data collection of this research. Therefore, a research instrument in the form of an interview guide (cf. Appendix 1) was designed to provide guidance and structure as well as to ensure that each participant was asked the same questions. The guide is divided into five different sections:

Personal Respondents’ Information

The first section deals with some personal data about the participant such as age and occupation. These questions were included to see the diversity of participants and to understand their current stage in life.

Introduction to Social Media Habits and Celebrity Content Consumption

With the semi-structured interviews, the researchers strived to get insights into the participants’ perspective without asking every single question, but rather letting the participant share his/her perspective. Hence, to encourage the participants to talk openly, some questions about their social media behavior were asked. Further, the research deals with negative emotions toward celebrity brands and due to social media, becoming a celebrity brand is presumably easier (Johns & English, 2016). The participants were asked to share their experiences with celebrities on social media, whether they follow celebrities and for which reasons, in order to get a better understanding of their consumption of celebrity-related content.

Reasons for Negative Emotions toward a Celebrity Brand

Consumer-brand-relationships are influenced by negative emotions (Fetscherin, 2019; Zaran- tonello et al., 2016). The authors assumed that the findings from corporate consumer-brand- relationships also apply to the relationships between celebrity brands and consumers. Past re-

25 search showed that several reasons lead to negative emotions. For instance, moral clashes, identification issues, or missing credibility (Lee, Motion, et al., 2009; Um, 2013) or trigger events such as celebrity scandals (Freire et al., 2018). The first research question acts on the reasons for negative emotions. Thus, in the third part of the interviews, the negative emotions of the participant toward the celebrity brand were deeper investigated. Open-ended questions were used to encourage a broad description of the participant’s perspective without restricting it to a specific direction.

Behavioral Outcomes of Negative Emotions toward Celebrities

Lee, Motion, et al. (2009) found that negative emotions due to different reasons such as moral ones, lead to brand avoidance. Fetscherin (2019) linked in his study the level of hate to different behavioral outcomes, e.g. public complaining, visiting anti-branding websites, and willingness to make financial sacrifices. To investigate which behavioral outcomes derive from the negative emotions toward celebrities, the second research question was built. To answer this question, the fourth section of the interview guide is concerned with the behavioral outcomes following the negative emotions. Furthermore, participants were asked if these activities provide any feeling of satisfaction or release for them as well as if they think that they have any impact on the celebrity. This was asked to get deeper insights into the consumer’s motivation behind his/her behavior.

Possible Neutralization Actions of Negative Emotions

The last section of the interview guide specifically targeted the third research question of this study by asking for specific actions the celebrity could undertake, to change the interviewee’s view of him/her to a less negative one. Situational settings, which would also encourage such a shift, were asked to describe as well. Out of these findings, recommendations can be defined for the celebrity to alleviate negative emotions.

Before starting with the actual primary data collection, two test interviews were conducted on March 27, 2020. The purpose of a pilot test is to avoid misunderstandings of the participants regarding the research problem and interview questions (Ghauri & Grønhaug, 2010). In this way, valuable feedback was collected which helped to adjust the interview guide, eliminating all ambiguities. For instance, a question was added to highlight the attributes of the celebrity instead of only getting insights on their behavior. Further, the pre-test uncovered, that participants less likely describe their negative emotions without the interviewee asking specifically for it.

The authors further used the test sessions to synchronize the interview process as the actual interviews were held separately and not with both authors present. Finally, 16 interviews were conducted between the 27th of March and the 6th of April 2020. Due to almost all participants living outside of Sweden, the interviews were held via telephone or Skype and recorded for analysis purposes.

3.6 Sampling

For the sample selection of this research, purposive sampling was used which is a form of non- probability sampling (Bryman & Bell, 2015). The aim of purposive sampling is to select participants based on their fit to the research question instead of sampling randomly (Bryman & Bell, 2015). The purpose of the present study is to investigate the negative emotions of consumers toward a celebrity brand and establishing possible actions or situations which can neutralize these emotions. Hence, the participants were required to have some sort of negative relationship with a celebrity which served as a selection criterion. For this reason, criterion sampling (Bryman & Bell, 2015) was used in order to ensure the existence of such negative emotions. Due to the high relevance of social media in establishing a celebrity brand, the participants were also required to use social media. Other than that, no restrictions concerning, e.g. age or gender, were made.

In order to find fitting participants, the authors searched on social media, namely Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and blogs, for user comments which contained a negative statement about a celebrity. Celebrities were chosen on the authors best knowledge of celebrities and articles that deal with celebrity rankings, for instance, the Top 100 influencers in 2019. If the authors classified the comment as relevant, the user was contacted to further check if he/she qualified and was also willing to participate in the study. Due to this selection process, it was not possible to gain insights into completely randomly selected celebrities as the authors had to specifically search for comments on the social media pages of celebrities. Thus, additionally, snowball sampling was used. Snowball sampling indicates that participants were obtained from information received by the first selected participants (Zikmund et al., 2010). This enabled the authors to find participants with negative emotions toward several celebrity types. In the end, data was gathered on 15 celebrity brands, including singers, reality stars, a comedian, a moderator, an author, bloggers, and athletes.

3.7 Research Ethics

It is important to address the ethical considerations of this research, especially as it involved trust-based interactions with human beings (Daymon & Holloway, 2011). The authors followed the ethical research principles in order to protect the interviewees. The participation in the study happened on a voluntary basis with full information about the research purpose and process provided beforehand. Furthermore, no sensitive questions were asked which could have caused mental stress or an invasion of participants’ privacy (Ghauri & Grønhaug, 2010). Before starting the interview, each participant was asked for their agreement on recording the interview. Moreover, he/she was informed about the anonymous and confidential use of the data only for this thesis. Lastly, the participants were able to exit the study at any given point of time as well as to refuse to answer a question.

3.8 Research Quality

As alternatives to validity and reliability which are used in quantitative studies, Lincoln and Guba (1985) established the criteria of trustworthiness and authenticity for evaluating the research quality of qualitative studies.

Authenticity

The authenticity of a qualitative study is given when the strategies used are “appropriate for the ‘true’ reporting of participants’ ideas, when the study is fair, and when it helps participants and similar groups to understand their world and improve it” (Daymon & Holloway, 2011, p. 84). In other words, several realities must be shown in a complete, true, and fair way which can be achieved, e.g. by adequate sampling and a thorough presentation of participants’ perspectives (Connelly, 2016). For this reason, the interviewees were chosen based on publicly sharing their negative emotions toward a celebrity. During the interviews, they were then able to explain their views and feelings in a very detailed way which the authors tried to portray as well as possible.

Trustworthiness

The trustworthiness of research is defined as “the degree of confidence in data, interpretation, and methods used to ensure the quality of a study” (Connelly, 2016, p. 435). For its evaluation, four criteria are used: credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability (Bryman & Bell, 2015; Daymon & Holloway, 2011).

Credibility displays the most important of these four criteria and presents, according to Lincoln and Guba (1985), the aim of qualitative research. A study is considered credible if it was conducted using adequate procedures that are in accordance with good research practice (Bryman & Bell, 2015; Connelly, 2016). In the present case, semi-structured interviews were employed which constitute as a standard method for qualitative data collection (Bryman & Bell, 2015). Furthermore, credibility shows the truth of the data meaning how well the views of the participants were presented and interpreted by the researcher (Cope, 2014). In order to ensure a full understanding, the authors acquired an extensive theoretical knowledge of the topic. Moreover, additional questions were asked if ambiguities occurred during the interviews. Lastly, peer review was used to eliminate any biased or unclear data interpretation.

Due to the very small sample sizes, qualitative studies are never generalizable. However, their findings still might be transferable to other settings, situations, or groups (Cope, 2014; Daymon & Holloway, 2011). Therefore, transferability is given if people who did not participate in the study are able to connect the research results to their own experiences (Cope, 2014). As the present study does not focus on any specific celebrity brand, the findings can be easily trans- ferred to any given one, especially as there exist so many worldwide. Moreover, having negative emotions toward a celebrity or any type of brand is supposedly common.

Dependability refers to the stability and consistency of the study as well as the consistency and accuracy of the data and hence findings (Connelly, 2016; Daymon & Holloway, 2011). For this reason, the data collection process of this research is described in detail and the interview questions are attached in the appendix. Furthermore, the given questions were used consistently in every interview conducted.

As qualitative collected data needs to be interpreted by the researcher, complete neutrality or objectivity is impossible (Bryman & Bell, 2015). However, confirmability prevents researchers to interpret the data based on biases, e.g. prior assumptions or personal values (Bryman & Bell, 2015; Daymon & Holloway, 2011). The findings need to portray the perceptions of the inform- ants and not the ones of the authors of the study (Shenton, 2004). Therefore, all interpretations and conclusions drawn from the interviews are linked to their sources. In this way, the authors prove that the findings derive directly from the data (Cope, 2014; Daymon & Holloway, 2011). Moreover, as mentioned before, the analysis of the interviews was reviewed by peers in order to detect inappropriate subjectivity (Daymon & Holloway, 2011).

3.9 Data Analysis

In general, qualitative data analysis does not follow a specific procedure. The mass of data generated by conducting interviews needs to be structured to be further interpreted (Ghauri & Grønhaug, 2010). This research proceeds a problem-driven analysis (Krippendorff, 2013). Problem-driven analyses focus on generating knowledge by analyzing content that provides an answer to a real-world problem that was identified (Krippendorff, 2013). To follow a roughly strategic approach of analyzing the qualitative data, the Qualitative Content Analysis according to Mayring (2015) is used. Mayring (2015) suggests nine steps to follow while analyzing the collected data:

Step 1: Assessing the Data

To get a first impression of the data, only the relevant data to answer the research questions should be determined for further analysis. All other data gathered by conducting the interviews should not be considered. Hence, in most cases a relevant subset of the data is defined. In this study, participants were only asked questions that helped to answer the research questions. Thus, the data was not minimized. However, 16 interviews were conducted to get insights into people’s emotions and behaviors.

Step 2: Analyzing the Emergence of Data

For a better understanding of the data collection, it is important to understand the aim of the researchers. Further, in the case of interviews, the participants’ situations are particularly interesting. For example, what is their social status? The aim of this research was clarified beforehand by determining the research questions and writing an interview guide that includes all essential parts to answer the research questions. Further, semi-structured interviews were conducted via telephone by either one of the authors. Later, to introduce the participants, the data analysis chapter starts with a demographic overview of the participants.

Step 3: Formality of Analyzed Material

The form of the analyzed material should be clearly defined to consider the characteristics of a certain material as well as possible limitations (Mayring, 2015). For this research telephone interviews were transcribed. Hence, the analyzed material are transcripts. The interviews were transcribed word-by-word, but not including dialects or pause fillers.

Step 4: Determination of Analysis Focus

The focus of analyzing is determined before starting the analysis (Mayring, 2015). A content analysis or an analysis that focuses on the emotions of a respondent can be conducted (Mayring, 2015). The research method of this study were telephone interviews. Thus, the participants could not be observed by the interviewer and emotions could only be caught in a limited way. Raising voices or laughter was noticed. Further, an explanation of emotions, behavioral changes, and possible neutralization actions was requested. Hence, the analysis focus of this study is on the content of the transcripts, not the emotions.

Step 5: Theoretical Foundation of Research Aim

The interpretation of the analyzed data should be embedded in a theoretical framework. Mayr- ing (2015) strives for a standardized procedure and thus a theoretical framework that is used for interpreting the findings and to support their reliability. In this research a literature review was conducted before starting the interviews to structure the interview guide based on past research findings. Further, in the analysis part, findings are linked to theoretical foundations found by past research.

Step 6: Determination of Analysis Technique

Three analysis techniques exist: summarizing, explication, and structuring (Mayring, 2015). In the context of this thesis a structuring analysis technique was used. This means the transcripts were inductively coded and categories were built (Mayring, 2015). First, the transcripts were screened for citations that answer the research questions. Secondly, those citations were paraphrased and thirdly, keywords were identified. Finally, codes were given to the cases which were afterward categorized. For instance, participant PB stated: “I generally find these influencers who post any discount codes on Instagram extremely annoying.” This was paraphrased into: “Influencer who promote products are annoying” and then coded as “reasons for following celebrities on social media”. After analyzing 30% of the interviews, common codes and categories were defined and afterward applied to the remaining 70% of interviews (see Appendix 2).

Step 7: Definition of Analysis Units

The size of the analyzed element should be defined. Distinction is done between coding units, context units, and sampling units (Mayring, 2015). In this research the following definitions were applied:

› Coding Unit: Meaningful text elements › Context Unit: The whole interview of a participant › Sampling Unit: All 16 interviews

Step 8: Analyzing the Data

Finally, the data is analyzed by using the analysis elements and defined analysis technique (Mayring, 2015). In this study the data was analyzed according to the structuring analysis technique by applying codes and categories to the data.

Step 9: Application of Quality Criteria

To see if the research analysis was done appropriately, the quality criteria reliability was applied to the data. During this research, reliability was proven by a substantial Cohen’s Kappa value of 76%. The Cohen’s Kappa is a statistical measure indicating inter-coder reliability for qualitative data analysis (Landis & Koch, 1977). Thus, the first 30% of the data were analyzed independently by both coders and afterwards, coding was compared, and the reliability was tested by calculating the Cohen’s Kappa (see Appendix 3).

The Qualitative Content Analysis (Mayring, 2015) provides a structured approach to analyze qualitative data. However, by finding common patterns among the participants’ responses, context and emotions might get lost. Nevertheless, the focus of this research was on analyzing and interpret the information provided by the participants rather than catching emotions. Thus, the Qualitative Content Analysis is an appropriate method to analyze the interviews. The following chapter presents the findings that derive from the structuring content analysis that was pro- ceeded according to step six of Mayring’s (2015) Qualitative Content Analysis.

4. Findings and Discussion

The analysis of the transcripts is structured in five categories: social media use, negative emotions, behavioral outcomes, motivational drivers of the behavioral outcomes, and neutralization actions. Illustrating characteristics of this study’s sample, the participants of the interviews are introduced in a participant overview, presenting the participants’ demographics, toward which celebrities they have negative emotions, and their social media accounts. Then, the extent to which participants consume content of celebrity brands is highlighted. To understand which behaviors result from negative emotions, the negative emotions are first described and further conceptualized by using past research findings. The same applies to behavioral outcomes which can be linked, among others, to the concepts of brand avoidance and brand hate. Finally, possible attenuating patterns are derived from the data and linked to brand strengthening factors.

4.1 Participant Overview

Sixteen interviews were conducted for this study. The majority of participants lived in Ger- many. Further, most of the participants were female and only five males. The age range of the sample was from 15 to 30 years old. The 15-year-old participant was a pupil, all others were either students or employees. Their most commonly used social media channel was Instagram, which all beside of one participant used. Furthermore, Facebook and YouTube were used by the participants and considered as relevant for the context of following celebrities online by the authors (see Table 2). Other social media channels mentioned by the participants were Snap- chat, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Xing, Pinterest, Twitter, and Telegram.

The celebrities toward whom the participants had negative emotions, ranged from very famous athletes to less-known influencers such as Bianca Heinicke. Some of the celebrities are only famous in Germany such as Laura Müller who is the girlfriend of the singer Michael Wendler.

Table 2. Participant Overview

Social Media Channels (relevant for context of celebrity following) Participant Gender Age Country Occupation Celebrity Category Instagram Facebook YouTube PA Female 23 Germany Student Peter Wohlleben Author x x PB Female 23 Sweden Student Daniela Katzenberger Reality Star x x PC Female 15 Germany Pupil Xavier Naidoo Singer x PD Female 25 Germany Student Oliver Pocher Comedian x PE Female 26 Germany Employee Massimo Sinató Dancer x x PF Female 24 Germany Student Chris Brown Singer x PG Female 25 Germany Employee Justin Bieber Singer x x PH Male 28 Germany Employee Marcus Prinz von Anhalt Reality Star x x PI Female 27 Germany Employee Angelina Heger Reality Star x PJ Female 20 Thailand Student Logan Paul Blogger x x x PK Female 22 Germany Employee Laura Müller Reality Star x x PL Male 28 Germany Employee Mesut Özil Athlete x x PM Male 27 Germany Employee Massimo Sinató Dancer x x PN Male 30 Germany Employee Tom Brady Athlete x PO Female 25 Germany Student Markus Lanz Moderator x x PP Male 26 Germany Student Bianca Heinicke Blogger x

4.2 Following Celebrities on Social Media

Celebrities profit from communication with their followers on social media. This simplifies the process of establishing their celebrity brands. Thus, the interview participants were asked to describe if they follow celebrities online and if so, why they do it. Some of the participants stated that they do not follow celebrities on social media. In particular, one participant (PO) stated her lack of interest as she follows “No one. So really none because I don't care what they do.”

However, if participants follow celebrities, the reasons were interesting, inspirational, and helpful content as well as entertainment. Further, sympathy and the possibility to identify themselves with the celebrity were mentioned as reasons. Staying up to date, getting travel inspiration, being a role model, and receiving discounts were also indicated.

These findings are similar to Kowalczyk and Pounders (2016) who found that career information, personal information, authenticity, and emotional attachment are reasons for following celebrities on social media. Career information refers to the celebrity informing his/her fol- lower about the next career steps, for example, a new movie, a new album or concerts (Kow- alczyk & Pounders, 2016). Staying up to date was important for the participants of this study and a reason for following celebrities. Personal information about the celebrity can be perceived as helpful for the followers. For instance, participant PD indicates “here in Dortmund I follow many BVB [soccer club] players, simply because you can see what they do in their eve- ryday life. For example, which restaurants they choose and of course, you can use that because

34 we have moved here and then these local bloggers are helpful.” Other personal information such as interesting and inspiring content was, for example, important for participant PG: “So maybe, on the one hand, to get inspiration, just how they dress or whether they do a special sport. […] Or maybe to see where they travel to and if that is also interesting for me.” Identifi- cation with the celebrity and admiring the celebrity reflects an emotional bond. Particularly, the youngest participant (PC) indicated to follow “real people that I personally see as a role model.” Authenticity is reflected by participants noting sympathy as a criterion to follow celebrities. Abstracting, the findings of this study support the ones of Kowalczyk and Pounders (2016). Thus, career information, personal information, authenticity, and emotional attachment function as reasons for following celebrities on social media.

However, when following celebrity brands, it can often be observed that discount codes are offered. Particularly influencer such as Bianca Heinicke promote products by offering discounts. Whereas some followers might be annoyed by this kind of postings by celebrity brands (e.g. PB), others appreciate it (e.g. PE). Thus, purchasing advantages in the form of discounts on either celebrity-branded products or celebrity-endorsed products are identified as a reason to follow celebrities. For celebrities, promoting products is an important factor to engage in marketing and hence to establish a celebrity brand and make profit (Johns & English, 2016).

Finally, the importance of creating value in either one of the reasons for following celebrities is highlighted by participant PB who stated: “but I am actually thinking of unfollowing her soon because it just annoys me. I am a person; I limit who I follow very strongly because I really look at things. And you can't see everything from 600 people, so I think I only have something with 100 people that I follow, because that really interests me.” This underlines that celebrities are at risk of losing followers online and thus revenues if they do not provide additional value to their audience.

4.3 Negative Emotions toward Celebrities

Participants were asked to comment on their negative emotions toward celebrities. The participants‘ insights allow a better understanding of what elicits negative emotions and which emotions are actually arisen by the participant’s perception of the celebrity. Thus, the emotions of the participants are described and the reasons for the negative emotions are named. Analyzing the data showed that these reasons are either based on personal characteristics of the celebrity

35 or his/her behavior. To further discuss the findings of this study and to abstract them logically, past research is integrated into the analysis.

4.3.1 Personal Characteristics as Reasons for Negative Emotions

Participants indicated personal characteristics of the celebrities that triggered negative emotions in them. Expectedly, also behavioral patterns elicit negative emotions, but a distinction is done to draw a clearer picture of all the reasons. Participants predominantly named egoism as a negative characteristic of celebrities. Further, stupidity, conniving, and offending were character traits that impinge on the participants’ perception.

Participants mentioned reasons that were accompanied by others. Egoism, for example, often was attended by unattractiveness. Whereas egoism has not been found in past research by the authors, attractiveness is included in several past researches that describe influences of a person’s perception, especially in the context of celebrity endorsement (Erdogan, 1999; Freire et al., 2018; Um, 2013). Attractiveness means the physical appearance of a celebrity (Freire et al., 2018). Participant PM highlights the unattractiveness and the egoism of Massimo Sinatró, the celebrity he does not like, by noting: “He always places himself in the center of attention, but he can’t do anything, except once a year dancing with some C-celebrity for two months in a TV show. […] I just don't like his style. First of all, he has a very disgusting full beard and wears hats.” Egoism further was mentioned by several other participants and thus plays a key role in terms of triggering negative emotions.

Additionally to attractiveness, past research identified credibility and expertise as influences on the attitude toward celebrities (Freire et al., 2018; Um, 2013). Credibility refers to the trustworthiness of the celebrity and consequently his/her honesty and sincerity (Um, 2013). Celeb- rities that were characterized by the participants (PK, PP) as conniving are not sincere or trust- worthy as they take advantage of their audience or other celebrities by exploiting, for example, their uncertainty or fame. Expertise is reflected by the perceived stupidity of celebrities as a reason for negative emotions. Dumb and stupid were frequently used for describing the celebrity. Stupidity was not necessarily linked to stupidly perceived statements, but rather to the appearance. Even if the celebrity was considered as an expert in its occupational field, he/she was perceived as stupid in general because of his/her public appearance. Participant PK points out that she perceives the celebrity as “stupid. At least that's how she behaves. Also, a bit conniving, because I think she just uses the Wendler so that she becomes famous.” Thus, missing

36 credibility and expertise, in terms of being conniving and stupid, elicit negative emotions toward a celebrity.

Whereas the characteristic reasons presented above are not hurting anyone’s feelings directly, being offending and insulting does. In fact, one participant (PD) characterized the celebrity as “weak, annoying, insulting, offending!” The participant meant the fundamental motivation of the celebrity behind his behavior to insult and offend people. Hence, the character weakness of a celebrity is also a reason for negative emotions.

To the four characteristics identified in past research, egoism and character weakness of a celebrity are added and hence six characteristic reasons for negative emotions are identified (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. Personal Characteristics as Reasons for Negative Emotions

Contrary to behavioral reasons, only some of the characteristic reasons are controllable by the celebrity. For instance, celebrities can be eager to develop expertise in the domain which they represent. However, attractiveness in terms of physical appearance is not naturally influencea- ble, but as attractiveness was mainly accompanied by other reasons, these are predominantly.

4.3.2 Behavioral Reasons for Negative Emotions

After analyzing the characteristic reasons, several participants indicated behavioral reasons of the celebrity which elicit negative emotions in them. Greed for profit, inauthenticity, fraudulent and violent behavior as well as abuse of reach and role model function were some of these reasons. Moreover, identification issues and not achieving something valuable in life were highlighted and affect the participants’ emotions negatively.

Cocksure celebrities that show instructive behavior are perceived negatively as their behavior is unsubstantiated and the celebrity just shows off. Participant PB underlined it: “I find it very exhausting when they try to instruct you. If they take this position and think they are the all- 37 known and can now instruct all their followers - because they think they are the best influencer - and say ‘this and that should be done’. And constantly sending messages like ‘health is the most important’ and blah blah, but that doesn't look authentic, it's just copying unimportant phrases.” The same participant described the celebrity’s behavior as inauthentic. The concept of brand avoidance, according to Lee, Motion, et al. (2009), mentions similar reasons for brand avoidance, particularly identity avoidance. Identity avoidance describes the perception of inauthenticity of the brand by the consumer (Lee, Motion, et al., 2009). Further, the consumer cannot identify with the brand’s promises as it does not represent the consumer’s self-concept (Lee, Motion, et al., 2009). Thus, the reasons of inauthenticity of the celebrity and identification issues with the fans of another celebrity are summarized as identity issues. The participants think that the celebrity does not represent their self-concept. Specifically, participant PG noted: “There is this group around him. His fans. I think it has to do with the fact that I just can't identify myself with these people who are following him so extremely now. I don't want to have anything to do with it.”

Further, moral issues are reasoning avoidance (Lee, Motion, et al., 2009). Moral avoidance indicates the avoidance of a brand due to a negative perceived societal impact (Lee, Motion, et al., 2009). It further includes an ethical component, as the consumers believe they act ethically by avoiding the brand (Lee, Motion, et al., 2009). This concept can be linked to the reasons: greed for profit, fraudulent behavior, and act of violence. Greed for profit at the expense of consumers seems to be unethical as participant PD noted “what bothers me about Oliver Pocher is that he always tries to find other people's weaknesses to make profit out of it.” Another participant (PP) underlined the cause for his negative emotions toward the beauty blogger Bianca Heinicke by stating: “she takes advantage of this uncertainty of young people who really do not have their own opinion yet in order to profit from it.” Fraudulent behavior also is described by the participants as a negative influence on society as celebrities use consumer’s credulity to like them, but just lie to them. Specifically, one participant (PA) illustrated, when describing the reasons for negative emotions toward the author Peter Wohlleben, “that's the biggest problem I have with him, namely that he plays on people's desire, but by using ‘alternative facts’. […] He pretends to be the holy angel of forestry, who finally explains to everyone how the forests work and that he is selfless and self-sacrificing, but actually he only plays on the lower instincts of mankind, abuses the forest and becomes rich.” Lastly, participant PF described the violent behavior of Chris Brown who abused Rihanna as the reason for disliking him. This act

38 of violence was unacceptable and unethical as being violent toward women is not accepted in most societies.

According to Zhou and Whitla (2013), perceived societal damage changes the reputation of a celebrity. Likewise, the abuse of a celebrity’s role model function and his/her reach are perceived as negative impacts on the society by the participants. Specifically, participant PC noted “I used to be a real Xavier Naidoo fan. […]. And for me, it was a real shock when I saw this video, where he, how can I say – laughs – just said far-right things that are really offending. And I just think that famous people who have a certain reach have a certain role model function. And that shouldn't be used to encourage right extremists.” Further, one participant (PL) illustrated “he uses his fame to spread pretty extreme content” which indicates the abuse of a celebrity’s reach. Thus, participants have negative emotions toward celebrities who negatively impact the society.

Additionally, some participants (PI, PK, PM) noted that the celebrities, they have negative emotions toward, never achieved something valuable in life. For instance, participant PK stated: “She quit high school, has no degree, nothing at all and is just famous because she is the girlfriend of Michael Wendler. […] Now she participates in every TV show. Until the hype is over and then she has nothing. Simply stupid. Her whole life concept, I think, just doesn't work.”

Summarizing, the following behavioral reasons trigger negative emotions toward celebrities and their brands according to the participants (see Figure 4).

Figure 4. Behavioral Reasons for Negative Emotions Generally, as included in the authors’ definition of a celebrity, the celebrity possesses influence on the target group. However, besides the identity issues, that are related to an individual’s

39 discrepancy with the celebrity and the missing achievements in life, all other reasons correspond to a misconduct toward the target audience. Unethical behavior (moral issues) refers to taking advantage of the target group. Abusing the role model function and the celebrity’s reach as well as showing unsubstantially instructive behavior is not in line with a positive target group influence either. Hence, the target audience should be positively influenced by the celebrity to not arise negative emotions.

4.3.3 Description of Negative Emotions

Often, participants preferred to complain about the celebrities’ behavior and characteristics instead of describing their emotions. However, when they were asked to comment on their negative emotions, sadness, anger, disgust, annoyance, and upset were mentioned most frequently. Further, disappointment was indicated. In particular, one participant (PC) reported how it feels to be a fan of a singer who has spread far-right content recently: “in any case, I am very disap- pointed and also totally angry. And somehow sad, because it bothers me even more because I am involved in quite a few actions helping refugees.”

Noticeable is, that the emotions anger, sadness, disappointment, being annoyed and upset were predominantly noted by the participants regarding perceived behavioral misconduct. One participant (PB) illustrated that “I generally find these influencers who post any promo codes on Instagram extremely annoying. […] And just make nonsense posts and that's actually annoying me.” Another participant (PP) felt upset about Bianca Heinicke because he thinks she has a bad influence on adolescents and “that upsets me. That this role model function is not adhered to.” These participants refer to the behavior of the celebrities by not using their reach and fame properly from the participant’s perspective. This perceived misconduct generally upsets, annoys, and disappoints. Even the deeper feeling of sadness arises by a celebrity’s misbehavior, especially in case of abusing the role model function.

The feeling of anger was already identified by Fetscherin (2019) as underlying emotion for brand hate toward corporate brands. Sternberg’s (2003) theory of interpersonal hate includes the three emotions anger, disgust, and contempt. He further identified seven types of hate, ranging from cool hate to burning hate, by combining those three emotions. Although this study did not strive to examine the level of hate based on the emotions, it can be highlighted that the three emotions are prevalent feelings toward celebrity brands. Specifically, one participant (PA) illustrated “it makes me super angry and I feel betrayed on my academic education. I see how

40 this man profits from his lies.” Whereas anger is elicited by the behavioral patterns of a celebrity, contempt and disgust seem to be triggered by personal characteristics of the celebrity. However, contempt was not directly mentioned by the participants. Yet, some of them described their feelings by characterizing the celebrity as stupid which implicates contempt toward the celebrity. Particularly when the participant’s friends talked about Angelina Heger, the participant (PI) noted “and this shows me again how incredibly stupid this person is.” Disgust was expressed by one participant (PD) highlighting to feel “rather negative.” about Oliver Pocher as “I saw him on social media yesterday, for example, because he was copied by another blogger, and then I just felt disgust.” This refers to the character weakness of the celebrity that is expressed by the insults of the celebrity toward other people. Hence, missing expertise arises contempt and character weakness apparently disgust.

Concluding, some of the emotions mentioned by the participants can be referred to past research of interpersonal hate (Sternberg, 2003) and brand hate toward corporate brands (Fetscherin, 2019). However, others such as sadness, feeling annoyed and upset were newly identified for celebrity brands. All these emotions and additionally anger, are seemingly elicited by behavioral misconducts of the celebrity, whereas contempt and disgust are referable to the character weaknesses of the celebrity.

4.4 Behavioral Outcomes

Researches about negative forms of consumer-brand-relationships, for example, brand hate, have not only identified the underlying emotions but also several different behavioral outcomes connected to them (Fetscherin, 2019; Zarantonello et al., 2016). In order to investigate possible unfavorable consumer behaviors resulting from negative emotions toward a celebrity brand, the participants were asked about their connection to the critical celebrity brand as well as behavioral reactions resulting from their negative emotions.

4.4.1 Content Consumption of the Celebrities

First, the participants were asked in which ways they are connected to the celebrity toward whom they have negative emotions. The purpose of this question was to identify if and how the participants are consuming content of the celebrity brand. Most of the participants answered, that they do not keep in contact with the celebrity, for example, by following him or her on

41 social media. Some negated this very clear by saying “No, of course, I'm not connected with that person.” (PD) or “Not at all. I'm not following him either.” (PG). However, for the participants who did state that they consume content of the celebrity, two different types were identified: active and passive consumption.

Concerning active consumption, participants described that they watch the celebrity’s talk show (PO) or videos of the celebrity on social media (PH). PB even followed an influencer she does not like on Instagram because the influencer is an old fellow student. She further explained that if this personal connection did not exist, she would not follow her and hence look at her posts or videos. Therefore, it can be said that interest in the content or a connection or commonalities with the celebrity through, for example, a shared past, can serve as a reason for consumers to stay connected with the celebrity and consume content of him or her despite the negative emotions felt toward the celebrity.

When it comes to passive consumption, participants described that although they do not actively seek for information about the celebrity, they do consume content related to him/her through TV, magazines, or the Internet: “You always see something on the Internet, for example, headlines on Promiflash, where you inform yourself about stars. Or on TV, when she's jumping around on Let's Dance” (PK). Two other participants (PI, PP) stated that they are informed about the activities of the specific celebrity through friends or family members. PI described that, although she only follows very few celebrities on social media, many of her friends are following bloggers and influencers and “That's why I always know when she has said something or I am shown some pictures [of her]”. PP explained that his source of information were his little cousins. The interviewer then asked for confirmation, if the participant does not follow the celebrity himself but is only informed about her through his cousins. He agreed to this and further added “It would also be a little weird if I was following a person, I had a grudge against”. Just like in interpersonal relationships, it is natural to distance oneself from someone you have negative emotions toward. Hence, most of the participants chose to not engage with the critical celebrity or actively consume his/her content. However, occasionally they are confronted with the celebrity through other sources.

As celebrity brands use social media to connect with their target group and thus for promotions and sales (Johns & English, 2016), non-consumption of their content is critical for celebrity brands. Furthermore, it was relevant to investigate the content consumption of consumers with negative emotions toward a celebrity brand in order to identify if neutralization actions performed by the celebrity brand will be even noticed. 42

4.4.2 Behavioral Outcomes from Negative Emotions toward the Celebrity

The interviews revealed three main types of unfavorable behaviors which are caused by the prior described negative emotions toward a celebrity: the spreading of negative WOM, avoidance of the celebrity, and unfollowing the celebrity on social media.

Negative Word-of-mouth (WOM)

When the participants were asked if they share their negative emotions and opinion about the celebrity with others, almost all answered yes. This is supported by past research which found that people respond more strongly to bad events than to comparable positive ones and hence are more likely to share these negative experiences (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer & Vohs, 2001). However, most of the participants said that they only share their emotions and opinion with friends and family but not online. The research of consumer complaining behaviors also differentiates negative WOM between private and public complaining (Day & Landon, 1977; Fox, 2008; Singh, 1988). Private complaining refers to sharing your negative experience or opinion with people in your close environment such as friends or family, whereas public complaining is directed at the brand or a larger audience (Fetscherin, 2019).

Only three participants reported that they have been engaging in public complaining. They shared their negative opinion about the celebrity by writing a comment on the Instagram page of the respective celebrity (PC, PH) or published a video containing the negative opinion and addressed it in a public talk (PA). Therefore, the findings of the interviews match with past consumer complaining research which found that most dissatisfied customers do not report their complaints to the firm, but rather seek more private strategies such as private complaining, brand switching or brand avoidance (Stephens & Gwinner, 1998).

Concerning private complaining, the participants can be divided into two groups – the ones who openly share their opinion and the ones who are more discrete about it. The latter described that they would only talk about their negative emotions with friends and family when directly ap- proached by them, as PG confirmed “No, I don’t share my opinion. Unless I'm asked about it. Then I wouldn't make a secret out of the fact that I don't like him that much. But otherwise not.” Others were more eager to share their thoughts, for example, PM who stated: “I do spread my hate quite openly, but only among friends.” The spreading of negative WOM acts as an active coping process for consumers (Fetscherin, 2019; Grégoire & Fisher, 2006) as it reduces dis-

43 satisfaction through venting about it (Nyer & Gopinath, 2005). Hence, the two different ap- proaches (open and discrete sharing) in private complaining might be explained by a different need for coping with the negative emotions or a different level of dissatisfaction.

In general, negative WOM basically serves two purposes: to harm the reputation of the brand and to exert influence on others to make them reconsider their relationship with the brand (Grégoire & Fisher, 2006). Both purposes can be achieved through public as well as private complaining. PA, for example, reported that she uses every opportunity, in her private and public life, to explain to people that Peter Wohlleben is a storyteller. In this way, she harms his reputation by portraying him as a liar, which eventually changes her audience’s perception of him. PP also described how he tries to subtly influence his little cousins. From time to time, he questions them about their behavior caused by Bianca Heinicke, for example, if they really need to have the specific dress or shoes Bianca recommended instead of just normal ones. Or if they perceive themselves as worse persons if they do not follow her advice. In this way, he indirectly shares his negative opinion about Bianca with them and encourages them to critically think about her.

Overall, it can be concluded that having negative emotions toward a celebrity results in sharing them with others. Although private complaining is performed more commonly than public complaining, both are unfavorable behavioral outcomes for the celebrity as both harm their brand.

Avoidance

Like negative WOM, avoidance also represents a behavioral coping process, but a passive instead of an active one. This is due to the fact that by avoiding a brand or a product, consumers only adjust their own behavior without trying to influence others (Harmeling, Magnusson & Singh, 2015). Past complaint behavior research has found that many customers do not complain to the firm they are unsatisfied with as they perceive it to be “not worth the effort” and hence rather engage in avoiding the brand or product (Stephens & Gwinner, 1998). The conducted interviews support these findings as the most named behavioral outcome was avoidance. Sev- eral participants stated that they avoid anything connected to the celebrity. Examples were de- leting and not listening to the celebrity’s songs anymore (PC, PF), changing the program when the celebrity is shown on the TV (PG, PF, PM), not reading articles about the celebrity in magazines (PG) or not consuming any other content related to the celebrity on social media or in general, on the internet (PL, PK, PD, PE).

Some of the participants also described that they only partially avoid the celebrity. For PK, for example, it is dependent on the media as she explained: “I don't think I would switch TV programs because of her. But if I read something about her, any articles on the Internet, then I don't click on them.” Similar behavior was described by PG who listens to Justin Bieber’s new songs but avoids anything else connected to him. When directly asked about avoiding his music, PG replied: “The new songs not, rather the songs from the beginning, when he was still hyped a lot. Now it's not as bad with the fan community anymore. Or at least you don't notice it as much anymore.” Hence, her emotions and resulting behavior can be classified as identity avoidance. As she cannot identify herself with the fan community of Justin Bieber from the beginning of his career, she perceives them as a negative reference group (Lee, Conroy, et al., 2009). Thus, she avoids everything connected to this group, for example, his old songs. How- ever, as she does not perceive the fans as badly anymore nowadays, she does not mind his current music.

Yet, some participants did not engage in avoidance. Although PO does not like Markus Lanz, she still watches his talk show as she is interested in the topics discussed in the show. The same applies to PN who stated: “I like the sport; I just think it's unfair what Tom Brady and the Patriots are doing. But I'd still watch the games, for example.” Therefore, it can be said that if another incentive exists such as the interest in the topic or the liking of the sport, the content of the celebrity will still be consumed despite the negative emotions. PJ and PH also actively choose to watch videos of the celebrity, although PH added that he does not believe what Prince Marcus is saying in them. Hence, it seems like he is watching the videos of Prince Marcus to seek confirmation of his negative emotions toward him. The reasoning of PJ is different. When asked about if she avoids Logan Paul, she replied: “No. In fact, if YouTube proposes a new video of him, I would check to see if he has changed.” Although inappropriate videos were the cause of her negative emotions toward him, she keeps on watching them to see if the content has now improved. However, she has not chosen to follow his social media accounts again, yet.

Concludingly, it can be said that avoidance is a behavioral outcome, in which most of the participants engage, whether by only partially or completely avoiding the celebrity and everything connected to him or her. Further, identity avoidance is a type of brand avoidance which was identified to be also relevant in the context of celebrity brands. Nevertheless, if the consumer

45 is interested in the content of the celebrity or which features the celebrity, he/she will still consume it. This interest can result from the content itself or because the consumer either seeks for reasons which reinforce his negative emotions, or which assuage them.

Unfollowing

Unfollowing the celebrity on social media was another behavioral outcome listed by participants as a result of developing negative emotions against him/her. PJ actually used to follow Logan Paul until two years ago, when she saw the videos which made her unfollow him. PC and PD both described themselves as being fans of Xavier Naidoo and Chris Brown which changed through the occurrence of negative events. Now, they both do not follow the respective celebrity anymore. This is a logical reaction as the reasons for following a celebrity on social media, which were discussed before, are mainly career information, personal information, authenticity, and emotional attachment. As the participants are experiencing negative emotions toward the celebrity, interest in the celebrity, authenticity, and emotional attachment are lacking. Therefore, no reasons to follow the celebrity exist.

Unfollowing can be seen as part of the avoidance strategy. However, the authors have decided to discuss them separately from each other due to the importance of social media for celebrity brands. Social media gives celebrity brands greater control over their image due to the self- creation of the content (Holmes & Redmond, 2014). Hence, if consumers unfollow the celebrity brand, the probability for consumers to notice neutralization actions becomes low, but also, they then only receive information about the celebrity brand from other media or sources such as friends. However, the image portrayed by these might be less beneficial than the one portrayed on social media by the celebrity brand itself. Concludingly, unfollowing is on one hand less wide-ranging than avoidance because it excludes only the active consumption of social media content, but not the active consumption of other content sources or passive consumption. Yet, on the other hand, the level of control of the celebrity brand over these contents is significantly less.

In summary, two of the three identified behavioral outcomes of negative emotions toward celebrity brands are related to the findings of past research on brand hate and brand avoidance, namely negative WOM and avoidance. The unfollowing of the celebrity’s social media accounts is further relevant for celebrity brands as social media presents a key communication channel with consumers for celebrity brands (Johns & English, 2016).

4.5 Motivational Drivers of the Behavioral Outcomes

In order to develop relevant neutralization actions for celebrity brands, it is important to also investigate the motivational drivers of the behavioral outcomes. The drivers can be differenti- ated between negative effects on the celebrity and his/her brand, e.g. loss in profit, and effects on the consumers themselves, e.g. personal benefit. These motivational drivers further serve as underlying reasons for the behavioral outcomes apart from the emotions discussed before. Moreover, they can provide an explanation for why some consumers choose to not engage in certain behaviors. Overall, the participants did not perceive their behaviors to have any impact on the celebrity. However, the sharing of the negative emotions, both privately and publicly, resulted in a good or even satisfying feeling for the participants.

The participants were asked if they perceive their negative emotions and the resulting behaviors to have any influence on the celebrity. Several researchers have found that whether consumers engage in public complaining depends on the perceived effectiveness of the complaint (Fox, 2008; Kim, Kim, Im & Shin, 2003; Stephens & Gwinner, 1998). Parallels to these studies can be found in the answers of the participants. For example, PP stated that he hardly does anything about the bad influence of Bianca Heinicke’s YouTube beauty channel on young girls, which is the cause of his negative emotions toward her. From his point of view, there is not a lot he can do about it and that it is difficult to make these young girls understand. Also, in the end, he does not consider it to be his responsibility as he is not the parent. This illustrates that, although he has negative emotions toward the celebrity for being a bad role model and taking advantage of teenage girls, he only responds little to it as he perceives the effectiveness of his actions to be low.

PH also did not believe that the negative comment, he left on Instagram, had any impact on Prince Marcus as he doubted that it was even noticed by him: “No, surely his management is behind this. Even if the guy posts something himself, I don't believe he then also reads the comments”. Hence, although the participant wrote a comment targeted directly toward the celebrity and below an Instagram post of him, he does not expect the comment to be read by the celebrity as he suspects the social media account to be run by his management. Thus, the effectiveness of the public complaining action is perceived to be low in terms of affecting the celebrity personally or expecting a response from him. According to PH, the reason for posting the comment was that he wanted to see the reactions of the other social media users.

PC’s reasoning for her comment on the Facebook page of Xavier Naidoo was similar. She wrote it as opposition to other comments which supported Naidoo’s far-right statements and not because she wanted to directly affect the celebrity. This is in line with the purposes of negative WOM described before, namely, to harm the brand’s reputation and to exert influence on others (Grégoire & Fisher, 2006). Further, PC stated that she benefitted from writing the comment because it made her feel better. Several other participants also stated that they feel better or even satisfied after sharing their negative emotions about the celebrity with others, whether privately or publicly. This affirms the active coping function of negative WOM by reducing dissatisfaction through venting one’s negative emotions (Nyer & Gopinath, 2005).

Fox (2008) found that consumers are more likely to publicly complain if they perceive the complaint to be effective, meaning to receive a response from the firm. This can serve as an explanation for why thirteen of the sixteen participants chose to not engage in public complaining. They might not see a sense in it as they do not expect the celebrity to read nor to react to negative comments. Even one of the participants who did publicly complain, did not expect the comment to be effective in the sense of the celebrity reading or even responding to it. In general, it was found that the public complaining activities of the participants were less directed at the celebrity brand but more toward its audience. Therefore, reasons for public complaining can also be to engage with other consumers and/or to exert influence on their opinion.

However, not only the effects of negative WOM but also of avoidance and unfollowing were investigated. Yet, it was found that independent of the type of behavior, the participants did not perceive any influence on the celebrity. Participant PG, for example, did not believe that her negative emotions toward Justin Bieber and thus not following him on social media, had any impact on him. She explained: “I think there are still enough people who follow him. I think the group that does not like him is not so big that it makes a difference. At least I can't imagine that he is affected by it in any way”. Hence, the participant did not believe in any impact of her behavior on the celebrity as she perceives his fan group to be bigger than his opposition.

In summary, the behavioral outcomes resulting from negative emotions toward a celebrity are generally perceived to have no effect on the celebrity, for example, because the fan group is perceived to be dominant or because it is not expected that celebrities read the comments on their social media profiles. However, consumers are motivated to engage in WOM as they benefit from it in terms of feeling better or satisfied.

4.6 Neutralization Actions

The last question of the interviews was about possible actions the celebrity could undertake in order to positively impact the negative emotions and hence the opinion of the participant. This question served two purposes. First, to find out if it is possible to positively influence consumers who have negative emotions toward the celebrity. And second, which are concrete actions the celebrity could undertake. As it is difficult to change negative emotions to positive ones, the goal of improvement already applies to having less negative emotions.

In general, the replies to this question were diversified. Many of the participants mentioned that it would be difficult to change their negative opinion about the celebrity: “I believe that once you have formed a perception of a person, then it becomes very difficult to change” (PM). Three of the participants (PC, PI, PM) even forthright said that there is nothing the celebrity could do to positively influence their views. Their reasoning is that their negative emotions toward the celebrity or the cause for these emotions are too severe. Participant PM described that he experiences it as positive when Tom Brady performs badly: “But of course, there is always gloat involved and I secretly hope that he will play a little less good. Otherwise, there's nothing he can do”. This implies that the participant is not interested in changing his emotions or opinion, but rather begrudges the American football player any success and hopes that he has bad luck instead.

However, most of the participants could imagine possible neutralization actions which partly correspond to the brand strengthening factors discussed in the theoretical frame. Only promise and hope were not directly reflected by the answers of the participants. Yet, promise could indirectly be connected to authenticity through the sub-category of stability. Hope, nonetheless, was not found to be a relevant factor for the establishment of neutralization actions for celebrity brands. Hence, four categories – authenticity, trust, acceptance, and attachment – with sub- categories were determined according to the findings and past research. The fifth category, adding value to society, was additionally identified during this study. These five categories build the basis for the development of neutralization actions.

Authenticity

Several answers of the participants were themed around the authenticity of the celebrity. State- ments like “He could act more real” (PD), “Maybe to come across more naturally or personally” (PK), and “By letting people finish talking and simply coming across more likable” (PO) imply for the celebrity to change his/her negative perception by acting in a more authentic and

49 pleasant way. Moreover, morality, sincerity, uniqueness, and stability were found to influence authenticity.

Showing moral behavior as neutralization action was indicated by several participants. In their research about what makes a human brand authentic, Moulard et al. (2015) define morality as “the perception that the celebrity demonstrates strong values and principles” (p. 179). They further illustrate that an authentic celebrity is believed to not deviate from his values and principles. PH and PM both accused their celebrity to take advantage of others. Hence, they both would like to see good morals in the form of ethical behavior instead. PM even goes one step further and demands Bianca Heinicke to take on her responsibility of being a role model. He further explained that she should not act as if she was the friend of her young viewers who only gives them helpful well-intended tips, but that she earns money with these videos and advertisement of the products. Thus, in this case, acting in a moral way would mean to not make profit out of adolescents by disguising as their friend.

PA’s negative emotions are caused by the propagation of lies by the book author Peter Wohl- leben, which also classifies as immoral behavior. She would wish for him to redeem his claims, however, she hardly believed in this: “But it will not happen, because it would be the greatest thing if Peter Wohlleben would revise what he has been saying for years.” However, she further named that an open and honest conversation with him, in which he would explain his alleged facts, would improve her opinion about him already as her negative emotions are not directed toward himself, but rather toward the content of his books and videos. Hence, the redemption of his statements or at least an explanation of their backgrounds would function as a neutralization action.

Xavier Naidoo’s far-right statements are another example of immorality which caused PC to develop negative emotions toward him. She cannot think of any action for him to undertake at the moment which would improve her opinion about him. On one hand, this is due to the gravity of his words and on the other hand, she also doubts the sincerity of any efforts from him to make amends as she described “Especially celebrities, they just do a lot for marketing. So, a lot of the things they do, they only do so that the people like them again. So, because they have to. That's why I want to take my time now and those weren't just a few little things he said, but some really extreme things and I think that's not something you just say like that.” In this example, the authenticity of the celebrity is questioned due to perceived insincere behavior.

The propositions of the participants PF and PJ also imply the wish for sincerity as they would like to see remorse of past behavior by the celebrity. In both cases, the negative emotions of the participant were caused by immoral behavior of the celebrity as well, namely domestic violence and inappropriate videos. However, these participants emphasized that the celebrity should prove regret of his actions and publicly apologize for them as stated by PJ: “He could apologize. Well, he already apologized for some of the things he did, but he could do more to prove that he regrets it.” PF further added that an open and honest public statement of Chris Brown in which he does not take on the role of the victim maybe would have changed her emotions about him. In fact, several participants mentioned that the possible neutralization actions would have to be implemented publicly, however, some doubt to even notice them due to the participant avoiding any contact with the celebrity.

Apart from being sincere and showing moral behavior, representing uniqueness and stability are important as well for creating authenticity (Moulard et al., 2015). PD was missing uniqueness for Oliver Pocher as she wished for him to have his own style as a comedian, which does not include talking bad about others. In the research of Moulard et al. (2015) uniqueness is labeled as originality which they define as “the perception that a celebrity thinks or acts in an independent, creative, or individual manner” (p. 179). Hence, a celebrity who owns a unique style is perceived as highly authentic. Stability, however, refers to sticking to one’s words, actions, principles, and characteristics (Moulard et al., 2015). PD was missing this behavior as well for Oliver Pocher as she described “What I also find stupid is that he is so inconsistent in the way how he manages his career.” She further related this to the many changes in his relationships. Many of his partners were women he had made fun of before he eventually started dating them. This is connected to not making false promises, which was discussed for Prince Marcus (PH) and Bianca Heinicke (PP). Overall, these examples illustrate that contrary behavior performed by celebrities is perceived as unauthentic and thus unfavorable by consumers.

Trust

The second category, building trust, is achieved by being open and honest as well as taking responsibility instead of making excuses (Deering & Murphy, 1998; Ryan & Oestrich, 1998; Six, 2005). This is connected to sincerity, which was discussed above. Trust constitutes as a basis for many relationships, which is why several participants mentioned openness and honesty as a possibility to positively influence their emotions toward the celebrity. Further, caring for others and assisting them is another way for celebrities to establish trust (Deutsch, 1973). PH, for example, described that he would maybe think better of Prince Marcus if he publicly stood

51 up for something good instead of defrauding gullible people with a fake business idea. There- fore, celebrities can gain consumers’ trust through transparent communication and empathetic behavior.

Acceptance

Acceptance, moreover, is achieved through showing affection (Rohner & Lansford, 2017). The celebrity should convey positive messages of, for example, fondness and good regard to each other (Floyd, 2016), which PC and PD both implied for Xavier Naidoo and Oliver Pocher. Consumers like to see celebrities treating other people in a friendly and respectful manner without prejudices or discrimination.

Attachment

Attachment between the celebrity and the consumer is built through expressing autonomy and relatedness (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Thomson, 2006). The celebrity can give consumers the feeling of autonomy, for example, by not pressuring them to be certain ways but to make them feel that they can be how they want to be. PP’s negative emotions toward Bianca Heinicke are caused by his perception of her putting social pressure on teenage girls. Conversely, he would like her to change this behavior. Hence, celebrities should promote independent thinking and acting of their consumers. Furthermore, relatedness is given when consumers can identify themselves with the celebrity. This is related to authenticity as well as identity avoidance. Con- sumers have a certain self-image and if this is incongruent with the image of a brand, consumers cannot identify themselves with the brand and its products and eventually avoid it (Lee, Motion, et al., 2009). The same applies to celebrity brands if consumers cannot relate to them. This is also why relatedness serves as a reason for participants to follow celebrities on social media.

Adding Value to Society

Several participants described that they would like to see the celebrity adding value to society by his/her actions, content or products. This neutralization action refers to the behavioral reasons found to negatively impact society and hence negatively impact consumer’s perception of the celebrity. PM described the value-adding as follows: “This is coupled with such incompre- hensible irrelevance. I think that is also the difficult part with all the Instagrammers. In the past, to advertise something, you had to be kind of famous for a reason. Namely, that you could do something. You somehow added value to society. But they don't give you any added value at all.” His statement is supported by PK and PI, who accused their respective celebrity, who are both reality stars, to not have any specific skills. In their eyes, Laura Müller and Angelina Heger

52 cannot really do something and are labeled by them as being of no use. PB also mentioned adding value but referred to it in the sense of inspiration, information or entertainment. If a celebrity fulfills one or more of these three criteria in a way that appeals to PB, the chances are good that she will be interested in the celebrity and follow him/her on social media. Therefore, celebrities such as influencers, reality stars or bloggers need to prove to consumers that they add value to society, which is given for “traditional” celebrity categories such as athletes, singers, actors, and politicians. However, when it comes to social media content, all celebrities need to put value into their content to be considered relevant and interesting and thus provide the incentive to follow their account.

In Figure 5, the five established categories and their sub-categories are visually presented to summarize the actions which were proposed by the participants to positively influence their emotions toward the celebrity.

Figure 5. Identified Categories for Neutralization Actions

Through improving their authenticity, trust, acceptance, and attachment as well as adding value to society, celebrity brands can positively impact consumers’ perception and thus attitude toward them. Moreover, the identified unfavorable behavioral outcomes resulting from negative emotions can subsequently be positively influenced as well.

The last chapters summarized and discussed the findings of this study. First, reasons for negative emotions were analyzed. Whereas some reasons could be linked to past research such as attractiveness, credibility, and identification issues, others were new. Especially, a clear distinction between personal characteristics and behavioral reasons for negative emotions toward celebrity brands was identifiable. This research added egoism and character weakness as personal characteristics of a celebrity that elicit negative emotions. For behavioral reasons especially the forms of moral and identification issues, e.g. greed for profit, enhanced past research. Further, the abuse of a celebrity’s role model function was an interesting new finding. Those reasons elicit negative emotions such as anger and disgust, which were already identified in the context of corporate brands (Fetscherin, 2019; Sternberg, 2003). However, this research additionally found sadness, annoyance, and upset as negative emotions toward celebrity brands. Moreover, the behavioral outcomes underlined the role of social media for celebrity brands, as participants stated to avoid and unfollow celebrity brands on social media if they feel negatively about them. Hence, celebrities are limited in the communication with their consumers if they unfollow them. However, negative WOM was mainly spread privately and not publicly through social media. This research also found that participants either openly or discrete engaged in private complaining. The latter was mainly encouraged by friends or family. Moreover, the researchers found that celebrity-related content consumption can be distinguished in active and passive consumption. Some participants only receive information about the celebrity through secondary sources, but rather avoid active content consumption. Further, it was interesting that besides feeling satisfied after sharing an opinion, which was already identified by past research (Nyer & Gopinath, 2005), some participants did not perceive any effects or expect any outcome of their behaviors. Finally, possible neutralization actions were derived which partly conform with brand strengthening factors such as trust, authenticity, and attachment (Davis, 2000; Mou- lard et al., 2015; Thomson, 2006). Though adding value to society was emphasized by the participants and thus enhances past research. Concludingly, this research is to some extent in line with former research findings, but it also gives some new insights into the role of negative emotions in consumer relationships with celebrity brands.

5. Conclusion

Based on the presented analysis and discussion of the collected data in this study, the research questions are answered in the following. Further, recommendations for the contributing parties of this research, namely celebrity brands, are given. Consequently, due to the chosen methodology of this study and deductions done based on past research, the limitations and delimitations are presented. Finally, interesting areas for future research are highlighted.

5.1 Response to the Research Questions

The purpose of this research was to investigate reasons for negative emotions and behaviors occurring in consumer-brand-relationships regarding celebrity brands and how celebrities can possibly neutralize these emotions. Therefore, three research questions were established. After conducting interviews and analyzing the findings in regard to the research questions, these can now be responded to.

RQ1. What are the reasons for negative emotions toward celebrity brands?

For celebrity brands, the celebrity and the brand are seen as one entity (Freire et al., 2018). Hence, reasons which elicit negative emotions within consumers are focusing on the celebrity, namely his personal characteristics or behaviors. Sometimes, it is the case that celebrities are disliked without them actually misbehaving but because they are perceived negatively, e.g. as egoistic or stupid. In these cases, the negative emotions of consumers cannot be connected to one specific event, but rather evolve over a period of time. As perception is very subjective, it is rather difficult for celebrities to avoid the development of negative emotions by consumers due to this reason. However, especially the characteristic reasons seem to arise contempt and disgust, which encourage private complaining (Fetscherin, 2019). Private complaining is the more harmful way of spreading negative WOM for celebrity brands as it is invisible for them and hence not controllable. Further, behavioral misconducts of celebrities cause negative outcomes but might also lead to positive consumer perceptions. One example is the Tiger Woods scandal, which illustrated that being involved in negative publicity cannot only damage all brand-building efforts of a celebrity but also in the worst case, ruin their career (Mills, Pat- terson & Quinn, 2015). This incident did not only terminate Tiger Wood’s marriage but also several of his sponsorship contracts. Yet, some scholars argue that the scandal also had positive

55 effects for Tiger Woods as it made him more human in the eyes of the public (Davie, King & Leonard, 2010; Mills et al., 2015).

The findings of this thesis also stress the importance for celebrities of being perceived as authentic and that consumers can identify themselves with the celebrity brand. However, the proposed neutralization actions show that there are other ways to accomplish this than a scandal. Nevertheless, the authors acknowledge that there are celebrities who build up their brand on a scandalous image and for whom a well-staged scandal increases the brand value (Mills et al., 2015). Still, to form an appreciated self-image, celebrities should involve in building a strong character rather than focusing too much on perfect behavior.

RQ2. What behavioral outcomes derive from negative emotions toward celebrity brands?

Independent of what caused the development of negative emotions toward a celebrity brand, consumers are drawing consequences from their negative emotions. Through the spreading of negative WOM consumers are harming the celebrity brand. Moreover, through avoiding or unfollowing the celebrity on social media, consumers choose to not actively consume any content of the celebrity brand. In this way, it is difficult for celebrities to win these consumers back as neutralization actions are less likely to be noticed.

Social media has facilitated the non-consumption of content in regard to celebrity brands. On the one hand, because social media platforms nowadays allow consumers to individually adjust the content which is displayed to them by unfollowing or regulating their privacy settings (Vaccaro et al., 2018). On the other hand, because the switching costs are a lot lower. With the growing number of celebrities gaining fame through social media (Johns & English, 2016; Keel & Nataraajan, 2012), their exchangeability has increased as well. This research has shown that consumers are fast when it comes to unfollowing somebody as there exist a lot of other celebrities or contents to consume instead, without suffering any losses in terms of entertainment. Contrary, consumers have specific demands on a celebrity brand in order to follow it online. The providence of interesting, relevant, and valuable content was found to be of high importance for consumers, which can prevent the avoidance of the celebrity brand despite the presence of negative emotions toward it.

Yet, celebrities might not be aware of the long-term effects of negative consumer emotions. Grégoire, Tripp and Legoux (2009) identified customers with a greater attachment to the brand to hold a longer grudge against it. This phenomenon was also observed within the present re-

56 search as one participant still passionately described her negative emotions and on-going reluc- tance of consuming any content or products of the celebrity although she used to be a fan of the celebrity and the causing incident dates back more than ten years. Hence, celebrity brands cannot afford to rest on having established positive consumer-brand-relationships but need to maintain them. Especially with the constant risk of being substituted and the difficul- ties of regaining consumers with negative emotions, if even possible.

RQ3. What can the celebrity brand do to neutralize the negative emotions toward its brand?

In some cases, there is nothing a celebrity can do to win back the consumer. Mostly this depends on the gravity of the cause that elicited the negative emotions within the consumer or the prior relationship between the consumer and the celebrity brand as just illustrated in the “longitudinal love-becomes-hate effect” (Grégoire et al., 2009, p. 18). Yet, other consumers are open to possibilities alleviating their negative emotions. These neutralization actions are based on authenticity, trust, acceptance, attachment, and adding value to society.

It was found that some celebrities balance on a thin line between providing content to consumers and seeming trivial. This is simple for celebrities who engage in a profession related to specific skills such as athletes or singers. Influencers or reality stars, however, are easily labeled as being “good-for-nothing" which makes it harder for them to show consumers that their actions and content add value to the audience. A summary of concrete actions for celebrity brands is presented in the following.

5.2 Managerial Implications

The present chapter provides implications for celebrity brands which serve as neutralization actions for negative emotions of consumers. Moreover, they also act as preventive actions for celebrity brands in order to avoid the development of negative emotions toward them in the first place. These implications are directed toward celebrity brands that do not build their brand around a scandalous or ruthless persona and/or whose careers are affected by negative publicity. Some categories of celebrities, e.g. singers, models, or reality stars, can profit from the increased attention caused by public drama (Mills et al., 2015), whereas others, e.g. athletes or politicians, want to avoid it. If a celebrity brand already has a certain positioning in consumer’s minds or is trying to establish it, as in the case of celebrity newcomers, sending contradictory

57 messages harms his/her brand building. An example illustrated in this research is Bianca Hein- icke who is generally perceived as a helpful and pretty girl from next door. However, engaging in activities that cast doubt to her authenticity or role model function, changes this perception of her and can cause a loss of followers and customers of her own and endorsed brands. Hence, the identified neutralization actions of this research are valuable for already established celebrity brands who want to achieve or maintain a positive image as well as for newly established celebrity brands as a support in their brand-building process.

Although several participants stated that there exist no neutralization actions for them as their emotions were too severe, the present study implies that consumers with more intense negative emotions are not automatically more difficult to be positively impacted than consumers with less intense emotions. This is due to the fact that the former generally showed more engagement, e.g. by being more informed about the celebrity and still consuming at least some content. The latter, in contrast, were found to be stating that they did not care. Nobel prize laureate Elie Wiesel once famously said “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” Therefore, the intensity of the negative emotions does not serve as an indicator of the success of the neutralization actions performed by the celebrity brand. As described before, the non-consumption of content of the celebrity brand by the consumer presents a great challenge for the celebrity as neutralization actions are likely to not be noticed. Hence, the celebrity should try to counter- act avoidance and unfollowing by providing content which is relevant and interesting for his/her target group and thus constitutes as an incentive for them to consume. For example, travel bloggers can ask their followers where to travel next or TV chefs can ask, which dish their audience would like them to cook.

Celebrity brands should, furthermore, pay attention to being authentic. Coming across naturally and likable but also sharing personal information about one’s life and not only career information is important to consumers, so that they can identify themselves with the celebrity brand. Many influencers, for example, share what they do throughout the day. Thus, this relatedness can increase the attachment of the consumers. The emotional bond can, moreover, turn consumers into social media followers of the celebrity brand. Further, celebrity brands can establish authenticity by following their own, unique style which also differentiates their brand from others. In this way, among others, comedians, actors, or singers can stand out from the crowd.

Additionally, celebrity brands should show affection for others and that they care about them. Influencers earn money by endorsing products; however, they should emphasize that they care more about customer satisfaction than profits. Moreover, celebrities should also add value to 58 society. An actor, for example, provides value in the form of entertainment by playing in mov- ies. Whereas an influencer can, for example, share recipes or fitness tips, which of course can be combined with an advertisement of an own or endorsed product. Yet, they should refrain from making product advertisements their main content.

In general, if a celebrity has done something wrong and thus faces negative backlash, the first reaction of the celebrity should be to take the responsibility of the actions and publicly apologize and show sincere remorse of his/her behavior. Contrary, making excuses, taking on the role of the victim, and blaming others are actions which should be refrained from. Further, questions about what has happened should be answered honestly. By being open and honest with the consumers, trust can be rebuilt. However, celebrities should be careful about making promises. If these promises cannot be held, they will cause damage to the celebrity brand.

Finally, Nyer and Gopinath (2005) found that effective public complaining reduces private complaining, which means that if consumers feel heard by the brand, they will reduce the spreading of negative WOM to friends and family. Hence, the celebrity brand should acknowledge negative comments on their social media accounts and reply to them in a sympa- thetic way and depending on the situation, apologize. This is especially relevant for celebrities who rely on a close relationship with their consumers such as influencers or singers.

To summarize, this study identified several concrete actions for celebrity brands to undertake to strengthen their brand and neutralize negative emotions of consumers toward them. In this way, celebrity brands can improve the relationship with their consumers in order to form strong bonds with a high level of attachment and identification of the consumers with the celebrity brand. Consumers who strongly identify with a celebrity brand are likely to purchase or recom- mend the celebrity’s products even in the occurrence of negative publicity as they are more committed to it (Johnson, 2005). Hence, celebrity brands profit from positive consumer-brand- relationships financially but also in terms of positive perception.

5.3 Limitations and Delimitations

The present research entails certain limitations and delimitations. First, positive emotions toward celebrity brands clearly exist but their effects on the celebrity brand are deliberately not considered during this research. As past research highlighted the higher influence of negative

59 emotions on consumers (Hilbig, 2009; Zeki & Romaya, 2008), the investigated research problem of this study focuses on negative emotions toward celebrity brands. Further, no specific type of celebrity brand was selected as a research stream. This allowed a broader examination of negative emotions toward celebrity brands and the behavioral outcomes to identify recommendations for celebrity brands independent of a certain occupation. However, specific findings for particular types of celebrity brands cannot be provided. The sampling of participants on social media based on negative comments on celebrity brand-related posts, limited the sampling to social media users. Social media eases the brand building for celebrities and therefore was considered as relevant during this study. However, celebrity brands are not only present on social media.

Limitations mainly derive from the chosen research design of this study. The insights gained during this research were used to find common patterns among participants and to give recommendations to celebrity brands. However, several other reasons for negative emotions, behavioral outcomes, and possible neutralization actions might exist. The sampling based on the criterion of showing negative emotions online and, furthermore, snowball sampling, reduced the diversity of participants based on the age range. The biggest group of social media users is between 18 and 29 years old (Statista, 2015). Besides two participants (15 and 30 years old), all participants were within this age range. Hence, data is missing from the younger and older generations. Clearly, time constraints also limited the data collection during this research in terms of intensive participant selection. Furthermore, most of the interviews were conducted in German. As both interviewer’s native language is German, no interview bias occurred but for the analysis of this research, results were translated into English, which might result in a loss of finer nuances and some accuracy.

Further, past research already investigated consumer-brand-relationships. Though as only limited research on celebrity brands exists, conclusions are mainly drawn based on findings of consumer-brand-relationship concepts referring to corporate brands. Further, consumer-brand-relationships toward a celebrity brand are assumed to be similar to interpersonal relationships. This acts as a limitation, as celebrity brands and celebrities themselves are still less approachable than people from a closer environment. As presented in the following chapter, future research could eliminate some of the limitations and delimitations.

5.4 Future Research

One of the delimitations of this study is the focus on negative emotions toward celebrity brands. Contrary, the influence of positive emotions toward celebrity brands on behavior is an interesting expanding research field. Reasons for appreciating celebrity brands were already investigated by past research (Freire et al., 2018; Um, 2013), which was also used in this study to oppositely explain the rise of negative emotions. However, which positive emotions are predominant could be further researched.

During the analysis of the data, several concepts that explain causalities in consumer-brand- relationships were referable to the findings of this study. The concept of brand hate (Fetscherin, 2019) provided an analytical foundation for the behavioral outcomes of negative emotions toward celebrity brands. Whereas only some of the behavioral outcomes from the brand hate concept were supported by this study, precisely negative WOM and avoidance, other more extreme behaviors such as brand retaliation and revenge were not expressed by the participants. Generally, most participants indicated that public complaining is not considered as an option for them for sharing their negative emotions. Even though, they mentioned anger as possessed emotion. According to Fetscherin (2019), anger results in burning hate and further public complaining. Hence, future research could examine the level of negative emotions and if a higher level of anger, for instance, might even result in public complaining or retaliation toward the celebrity brand. Sternberg’s (2003) theory of interpersonal hate could be applied to the findings of this study as well. The additional emotions that the researchers found, namely upset, annoyance, sadness, and disappointment, should be assessed by further research to examine to what extent they influence behavior.

An interesting area for future research would also be the effects of the behavioral outcomes. Whereas a feeling of satisfaction might arise after complaining about the celebrity brand or avoiding it, engagement in public complaining depends on the perceived effectiveness of the complaint (Fox, 2008). However, public complaints are the ones visible for a celebrity brand and hence the only complaints they can respond to. Thus, a deeper investigation of which celebrity behaviors or characteristics trigger which kind of consumer behavior may be addressed by future research. Additionally, people who have negative emotions toward a celebrity brand might actively avoid the celebrity brand and not even passively consume content related to it. Future research can examine, which channels can be used by the celebrity brands to show the consumers who have negative emotions, that the celebrity brand engages in behavioral changes to neutralize the negative emotions. 61

As this study followed an exploratory research design, future research should focus on extend- ing the gained insights by testing them quantitatively on a larger sample. A less diverse sampling, focusing on special types of celebrity brands, certain age groups or gender is needed to get more precise insights and to understand differences among those groups.

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Appendices

Appendix 1. Interview Guide

General information about the person › Age › Location of residence (Bundesland) › Occupation › Social media usage General information about the concerning celebrity brand › Which celebrity do you have negative emotions toward? › In which ways are you connected to the celebrity? › Have you ever personally talked to the celebrity (including personal messages on social media)? Description of the negative emotions and their reasons › Please tell me about your negative emotions toward the celebrity › How would you describe your emotions? › What are the reasons for them? › Which attributes are you assigning to the celebrity? Description of the behavioral outcomes › Do you share your view with others and if yes, how? › Do you avoid anything connected to the celebrity? › If not mentioned, specifically ask for: . Avoid consuming anything connected to the celebrity . Visit brand hate websites . Engage with other people sharing negative emotions toward the same celebrity . Tell friends, family or peers about it › Does any of these activities make you feel better / satisfied / released and why? › If the answer is no, ask: Why do you do these activities then? › Do you think that the celebrity notices these activities? › If yes, do you think he/she cares about them? Possible neutralization actions › What can the celebrity do to change your opinion about him/her? › In which situation could you imagine starting to engage again with the celebrity? › If not mentioned, specifically ask for: . Celebrity sending a private message or answering to the comment . Reimbursement for financial losses / inconveniences

Appendix 2. Categories for Data Analysis

Category Description Sub-Category Description 1 Social Media Behavior A Following of celebrities on social media B Reasons for negative emotions toward celebrities 2 Negative Emotions C Negative emotions toward celebrities G Perception of the celebrities character H Contact to the celebrity 3 Behavior I Sharing of opinion D Reactions resulting from sharing the opinion E Feelings resulting from sharing the opinion 4 Results J Influencing the celebrity by sharing opinion 5 Neutralization F Possibilities of neutralizing negative emotions

Appendix 3. Cohen's Kappa

Cohen's Kappa

M. Prüfer 0 1 Sum Probability 0 0 2 2 20% C. Dahmen 1 0 8 8 80% Sum 0 10 10 Probability 0% 20%

P0 80% Relative Probability Pe 16% Random Probability Cohen's Kappa 76% Substantial