To Collaborate or Serve? Effects of Anthropomorphized Brand Roles and Implicit Theories on Consumer Responses

This article extends on the literature regarding brand anthropomorphism and contributes to hospitality and tourism literature by demonstrating that positioning of different anthropomorphic brand roles (partner vs. servant) attracts diverse consumers. Drawing from the results of three experiments in various contexts, we theorize that brand role and consumer implicit theories can interactively influence consumer responses. Specifically, consumers who subscribe to entity theory (vs. incremental theory) express more favorable responses to a brand anthropomorphized as a servant (vs. a partner) than to that as a partner (vs. a servant). Moreover, this study confirms that consumers’ perceived self-efficacy mediates this interaction effect. Findings enrich the hospitality and tourism literature by introducing a matching effect between brand role and implicit theories and offering insightful implications for hospitality and tourism brand managers, especially advertisers, around modifying brand roles based on consumers’ mind-sets.