People

Brands are increasingly finding themselves on the receiving end of negative labels from a variety of sources. While sometimes warranted, many of these negative labels feel like unwarranted or uncivil insults. Brands generally respond to such undeserved degradation by ignoring the insult, denying the insult, or perhaps apologizing to the insulter. This research explores another potential strategy: reappropriating the insult. We reveal that reappropriation—an intentional act of verbatim self-labeling with an externally imposed negative label—can garner unexpected benefits for brands, including greater advertisement click-through rate, interest, and more positive attitudes. The advantage of reappropriation is driven by perceptions of the brand's confidence and humor and is specific to situations in which the reappropriated insult is perceived to be unjustified and ultimately benign in nature. This work contributes to our understanding of how brands can recover from negative events and how reappropriation operates uniquely in an unexplored marketplace context. We also provide a novel recovery tactic for brand managers facing certain types of hostility.

Many consumers are caregivers and, as part of caregiving, frequently make food choices for their dependents. This research examines how food choices made for children influence the healthiness of parents’ subsequent self-choices. Whereas prior work focuses on choices for the self (others) as based on self-needs (other-needs), the authors theorize when and why self-choices involve consideration of other-needs. Five studies, including a nursery school field study, test the effect of choosing healthy food for a child on the healthiness of parents’ self-choices, focusing on the role of anticipating potentially sharing self-choices with one's child. Potential sharing increased parents’ likelihood of making an unhealthy subsequent self-choice if they first made a healthy choice for their child. This effect was driven by parents’ present-focused parenting concerns about whether one's child would eat and enjoy healthy options chosen for them. This effect was mitigated when parents instead had future-focused parenting concerns. Additionally, this effect was mitigated after making an initial choice for the child that was (1) unhealthy or (2) healthy but relatively liked by the child. This research contributes to understanding how choices for others shape choices for the self and offers important marketing and policy implications.