ABSTRACT

Several hospitality brands changed their logos to reinforce the importance of social distancing in reducing the risk of virus infection. Since social distancing is a polarizing topic, this research intends to understand consumers’ attitudes towards social distancing and their response to branding change by hospitality brands. Study 1 creates and validates a multiple-item scale to examine consumers’ attitudes towards social distancing, which is then adopted for two subsequent studies. Study 2 tests consumers’ awareness and perceived brand anthropomorphism during a sensitive situation like a global pandemic and the impact of perceived brand anthropomorphism on brand love and brand defense. Study 3 tests the proposed model in study 2 across two customer segments, i.e. those in favor of social distancing and its effectiveness and those against it. Results indicate that brand anthropomorphism and brand love have a significantly positive impact on brand defense. Additionally, these relationships differ for consumers who favor or oppose social distancing. Our research contributes to the hospitality branding literature by studying relatively understudied branding constructs in an unprecedented context and offers insights for hospitality branding and marketing managers.

摘要

几个酒店品牌更改了徽标，以加强社交疏远在降低病毒感染风险中的重要性。由于社会距离是一个两极分化的话题，本研究旨在了解消费者对社会距离的态度及其对酒店品牌对品牌变化的反应。研究1创建并验证了一个多项目量表，以检验消费者对社会疏远的态度，然后将其用于随后的两项研究。研究2测试了消费者在全球流行等敏感情况下的认知度和感知品牌拟人化程度，以及感知品牌拟人化对品牌爱情和品牌防御的影响。研究3在两个客户群中测试了研究2中提出的模型，即支持社交距离及其有效性的人和反对它的人。结果表明，品牌拟人化和品牌爱对品牌防御具有显着的积极影响。此外，对于喜欢或反对社交距离的消费者，这些关系也有所不同。我们的研究通过在前所未有的背景下研究相对未被充分研究的品牌构造，为酒店品牌文献做出了贡献，并为酒店品牌和营销经理提供了见解。