To elicit positive consumer responses, many brands use underdog brand biographies in their brand communication strategies. Underdog brand biographies highlight a brand’s passion and determination in overcoming the external disadvantages the brand initially faced. This article examines to what extent consumers’ perceptions of passion/determination and external disadvantage reflected in an underdog brand biography independently influence narrative transportation, post-message engagement, and purchase intentions. Based on a study involving experimental manipulations of underdog and top dog brand biographies, this research contributes to the brand biography literature by demonstrating that passion/determination and external disadvantage have differential effects on narrative transportation, post-message engagement, and purchase intentions. It is also the first to empirically test the sequential mediating roles of narrative transportation and post-message engagement. For managerial practice, this research suggests that underdog brand biographies should emphasize the brand’s passion and determination and highlights the importance of post-message engagement in terms of information seeking, post-message elaboration, and social sharing in increasing purchase intentions.

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激情/决心和外部劣势对消费者对品牌传记的反应的影响

为了引起积极的消费者反应，许多品牌在他们的品牌传播策略中使用劣势品牌传记。失败者品牌传记突出了品牌在克服品牌最初面临的外部劣势方面的热情和决心。本文研究了消费者对失败者品牌传记中反映的激情/决心和外部劣势的看法在多大程度上独立地影响了叙事传播、消息​​后参与和购买意图。基于一项涉及对劣势和顶级品牌传记进行实验操作的研究，本研究通过证明激情/决心和外部劣势对叙事传播、消息​​后参与和购买意图有不同的影响，为品牌传记文献做出了贡献。它也是第一个实证测试叙事传输和消息后参与的顺序中介作用的人。对于管理实践，这项研究表明，处于劣势的品牌传记应强调品牌的热情和决心，并强调消息后参与在信息寻求、消息后阐述和社交分享方面对增加购买意愿的重要性。