Gift, Gift Return and Sanction, or how do non-Participants React Towards Empowering Brands’ messages?

Cambier, Fanny [UCL] Poncin, Ingrid [UCL]

PespiCo, Danone and Starbucks are examples of firms empowering their consumers for their new product development and their number is growing. Recent research highlighted that non-participants, representing the bulk of the brand audience, are sensitive to knowing that their brand appeals to consumers for developing their offer but their reactions are not always positive. A thorough understanding of the circumstances under which these (negative) effects occur and of how to attenuate them is therefore needed. To address this gap in the literature, we adopt a qualitative approach and we shed light on the unexpected and unwanted reactions from non-participants towards CES. Using gift-giving as a metaphor, we provide a thorough understanding of those reactions and propose a theory able to explain the mechanism behind, both for participants and non-participants in their exchanges with the brand.