The integration of sustainability within luxury brands is of increasing concern to practitioners and academics alike. Thus, it is important to consider how brands can develop effective communication strategies to promote sustainable luxury brands, particularly among an increasingly skeptical consumer base. This research thus investigates the impact of advertising slogans with negations (vs. affirmations) in this regard. Three experimental studies show that advertising slogans with negations (vs. affirmations) increase brand trustworthiness (Studies 1 and 3) and favorable brand attitudes (Studies 1 and 2) among consumers with high levels of skepticism. Notably, this effect is driven by an increased cognitive flexibility (Study 3). The findings of this research can assist sustainable luxury brand managers in developing effective communication strategies to increase favorable consumer responses to sustainable luxury brands.
AchabouM. A.DekhiliS. (2013). Luxury and sustainable development: Is there a match?Journal of Business Research, 66(10), 1896–1903.
2.
AmatulliC.CostabileM.De AngelisM.GuidoG. (Eds.) (2017). Luxury, sustainability, and “made in.” In Sustainable luxury brands (pp. 35–96). Springer.
3.
Anido FreireN.LoussaïefL. (2018). When advertising highlights the binomial identity values of luxury and CSR principles: The examples of Louis Vuitton and Hermès. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 25(4), 565–582.
4.
ArmitageJ.RobertsJ.SekhonY. K. (2017). Luxury products and services and the sustainable value chain: Six management lessons from Gucci. In: GardettiM.A. (Ed.), Sustainable management of luxury (pp. 259–279). Springer.
5.
BeukeboomC. J.FinkenauerC.WigboldusD. H. (2010). The negation bias: When negations signal stereotypic expectancies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(6), 978–992.
6.
BohnerG.EinwillerS.ErbH. P.SieblerF. (2003). When small means comfortable: Relations between product attributes in two-sided advertising. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 13(4), 454–463.
7.
BraemS.EgnerT. (2018). Getting a grip on cognitive flexibility. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(6), 470–476.
8.
BrauerM.Er-rafiyA.KawakamiK.PhillsC. E. (2012). Describing a group in positive terms reduces prejudice less effectively than describing it in positive and negative terms. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(3), 757–761.
9.
BuhrmesterM.KwangT.GoslingS. D. (2011). Amazon’s Mechanical Turk: A new source of inexpensive, yet high-quality, data?Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(1), 3–5.
10.
BullardO.PennerS.MainK. J. (2019). Can implicit theory influence construal level?Journal of Consumer Psychology, 29(4), 662–670.
CrispR. J.TurnerR. N. (2011). Cognitive adaptation to the experience of social and cultural diversity. Psychological Bulletin, 137(2), 242–266.
13.
CrowleyA. E.HoyerW. D. (1994). An integrative framework for understanding two-sided persuasion. Journal of Consumer Research, 20(4), 561–574.
14.
D’AnolfoM.AmatulliC.De AngelisM.PinoG. (2017). Luxury, sustainability, and corporate social responsibility: Insights from fashion luxury case studies and consumers’ perceptions. In GardettiM. A. (Ed.), Sustainable management of luxury (pp. 427–448). Springer.
15.
DaviesI. A.LeeZ.AhonkhaiI. (2012). Do consumers care about ethical-luxury?Journal of Business Ethics, 106(1), 37–51.
Ein-GarD.ShivB.TormalaZ. L. (2012). When blemishing leads to blossoming: The positive effect of negative information. Journal of Consumer Research, 38(5), 846–859.
19.
ErdemT.SwaitJ. (2004). Brand credibility, brand consideration, and choice. Journal of Consumer Research, 31(1), 191–198.
20.
ErdemT.SwaitJ.ValenzuelaA. (2006). Brands as signals: A cross-country validation study. Journal of Marketing, 70(1), 34–49.
21.
FengY.TongX.ZhuQ. (2020). The market value of sustainable practices in the luxury industry: An identity mismatch and institutional theoretical perspective. Transportation Research Part E Logistics and Transportation Review, 137, 101919.
HanJ.SeoY.KoE. (2017). Staging luxury experiences for understanding sustainable fashion consumption: A balance theory application. Journal of Business Research, 74, 162–167.
24.
HarperG.PeattieK. (2011). Tracking the influence of the first special journal issue on ‘Green Marketing’: A citation network analysis. Social Business, 1(3), 239–261.
25.
HassonU.GlucksbergS. (2006). Does understanding negation entail affirmation?: An examination of negated metaphors. Journal of Pragmatics, 38(7), 1015–1032.
26.
HauserD. J.SchwarzN. (2016). Attentive Turkers: MTurk participants perform better on online attention checks than do subject pool participants. Behavior Research Methods, 48(1), 400–407.
27.
HayesA. F. (2017). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
28.
HayesA. F.MontoyaA. K.RockwoodN. J. (2017). The analysis of mechanisms and their contingencies: PROCESS versus structural equation modeling. Australasian Marketing Journal (AMJ), 25(1), 76–81.
29.
JacksonT.HaidC. (2002). Gucci group-the new family of luxury brands. International Journal of New Product Development and Innovation Management, 4(2), 161–172.
30.
JanssenC.VanhammeJ.LindgreenA.LefebvreC. (2014). The catch-22 of responsible luxury: Effects of luxury product characteristics on consumers’ perception of fit with corporate social responsibility. Journal of Business Ethics, 119(1), 45–57.
31.
JoyA.SherryJ. F.VenkateshA.WangJ.ChanR. (2012). Fast fashion, sustainability, and the ethical appeal of luxury brands. Fashion Theory, 16(3), 273–295.
32.
KapfererJ.-N. (2010). All that glitters is not green: The challenge of sustainable luxury. European Business Review, 2, 40–45.
33.
KapfererJ. N.Michaut-DenizeauA. (2014). Is luxury compatible with sustainability? Luxury consumers’ viewpoint. Journal of Brand Management, 21(1), 1–22.
34.
KaratzasS.KapoulasA.PriporasC. V. (2019). Consumers’ perceptions on complexity and prospects of ethical luxury: Qualitative insights from Taiwan. Australasian Marketing Journal (AMJ), 27(4), 224–232.
35.
KaupB.LüdtkeJ.ZwaanR. A. (2006). Processing negated sentences with contradictory predicates: Is a door that is not open mentally closed?Journal of Pragmatics, 38(7), 1033–1050.
36.
KaupB.YaxleyR. H.MaddenC. J.ZwaanR. A.LüdtkeJ. (2007). Experiential simulations of negated text information. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 60(7), 976–990.
37.
KimK. (2020). Stealing thunder in negative political advertising: The persuasive impact of one-sided and two-sided negative messages on partisan individuals. Journal of Creative Communications, 15(1), 7–18.
38.
KleimanT.EnismanM. (2018). The conflict mindset: How internal conflicts affect self-regulation. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 12(5), e12387.
39.
KwonJ.SeoY.KoD. (2016). Effective luxury-brand advertising: The ES–IF matching (entity–symbolic versus incremental–functional) model. Journal of Advertising, 45(4), 459–471.
40.
MartinM. M.RubinR. B. (1995). A new measure of cognitive flexibility. Psychological Reports, 76(2), 623–626.
41.
MayoR.SchulY.BurnsteinE. (2004). “I am not guilty” vs “I am innocent”: Successful negation may depend on the schema used for its encoding. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40(4), 433–449.
42.
MicuA.MicuA. E.GeruM.LixandroiuR. C. (2017). Analyzing user sentiment in social media: Implications for online marketing strategy. Psychology and Marketing, 34(12), 1094–1100.
43.
MorhartF.MalärL.GuèvremontA.GirardinF.GrohmannB. (2015). Brand authenticity: An integrative framework and measurement scale. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 25(2), 200–218.
44.
NaderiI.StruttonD. (2015). I support sustainability but only when doing so reflects fabulously on me: Can green narcissists be cultivated?Journal of Macromarketing, 35(1), 70–83.
45.
NallaperumaK.SeptiantoF.BandyopadhyayA. (2021). Mixed emotional appeal enhances advertising effectiveness of pro-environmental luxury brands: The mediating role of cognitive flexibility. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1108/apjml-10-2020-0719
46.
NuttavuthisitK.ThøgersenJ. (2017). The importance of consumer trust for the emergence of a market for green products: The case of organic food. Journal of Business Ethics, 140(2), 323–337.
47.
PeerE.VosgerauJ.AcquistiA. (2014). Reputation as a sufficient condition for data quality on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Behavior Research Methods, 46(4), 1023–1031.
48.
PelusoA. M.PinoG.AmatulliC.GuidoG. (2017). Luxury advertising and recognizable artworks: New insights on the “art infusion” effect. European Journal of Marketing, 51(11/12), 2192–2206.
49.
PiancatelliC.MassiM.VocinoA. (2021). The role of atmosphere in Italian museums: Effects on brand perceptions and visitor behavioral intentions. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 29, 546–566.
50.
PizzuttiC.BassoK.AlbornozM. (2016). The effect of the discounted attribute importance in two-sided messages. European Journal of Marketing, 50(9/10), 1703–1725.
51.
RothmanN. B.PrattM. G.ReesL.VogusT. J. (2017). Understanding the dual nature of ambivalence: Why and when ambivalence leads to good and bad outcomes. The Academy of Management Annals, 11(1), 33–72.
52.
SengabiraC. N.SeptiantoF.NortheyG. (2020). Committed to help: The effects of frequency of corporate donations on luxury brand evaluations. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, 32(3), 681–694.
53.
SeoY.KoD.KimJ. (2021). It Is all in the mind(set)! Matching mindsets and luxury tourism. Journal of Travel Research, 60(1), 184–196.
54.
SeptiantoF.SeoY.ErrmannA. C. (2021). Distinct effects of pride and gratitude appeals on sustainable luxury brands. Journal of Business Ethics, 169(2), 211–224.
55.
SeptiantoF.SeoY.SungB.ZhaoF. (2020). Authenticity and exclusivity appeals in luxury advertising: The role of promotion and prevention pride. European Journal of Marketing, 54(6), 1305–1323.
SimmonsJ. P.NelsonL. D.SimonsohnU. (2011). False-positive psychology: Undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis allows presenting anything as significant. Psychological Science, 22(11),1359–1366.
58.
SpearsN.SinghS. N. (2004). Measuring attitude toward the brand and purchase intentions. Journal of Current Issues & Research in Advertising, 26(2), 53–66.
TalukdarN.YuS. (2020). Do materialists care about sustainable luxury?Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 38(4), 465–478.
61.
VasiljevicM.CrispR. J. (2013). Tolerance by surprise: Evidence for a generalized reduction in prejudice and increased egalitarianism through novel category combination. PLoS One, 8(3), e57106.
62.
VeblenT. (1889). The theory of the leisure class. Macmillian.
63.
WangP.KuahA. T.LuQ.WongC.ThirumaranK.AdegbiteE.KendallW. (2021). The impact of value perceptions on purchase intention of sustainable luxury brands in China and the UK. Journal of Brand Management, 28(3), 325–346.
64.
WinterK.SchollA.SassenbergK. (2021). A matter of flexibility: Changing outgroup attitudes through messages with negations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 120(4), 956–976.
