Before the crisis
A brand signals coolness.
Consumers hold established beliefs about the brand's autonomy, status, and cultural relevance.
Manuscript · Under review at IJRM
Cool Brands in Crisis.
A product failure creates negative information. A cool brand enters that moment with an existing identity signal. This project asks when that signal protects the relationship, and when it does not.
The idea, animatedCoolness as a buffer
The problem
Reputation is not a single reserve of goodwill.
Brands enter crises with different symbolic meanings. Coolness may provide a reputational buffer, but consumers do not interpret status, distinctiveness, and transgression in the same way. This coauthored research examines the cultural belief that helps explain that variation.
The central idea
Brand meaning and cultural belief meet at the moment of failure.
At the failure
The signal is tested.
Negative information forces consumers to decide whether prior meaning remains diagnostic.
Across consumers
Cultural belief sets the boundary.
Power distance belief helps explain why the same coolness signal may not protect every relationship equally.
Inside the method
From causal control to marketplace consequence.
The program combines four experiments with an automotive-recall study. The experiments isolate the proposed process; the recall context examines whether the theory remains meaningful around an actual product-harm event.
Causal process
Four experiments
Controlled designs test how brand coolness and power distance belief shape consumer response under product failure.
Market evidence
Automotive-recall study
A consequential market setting extends the question beyond hypothetical brand scenarios.
