Impact Of Misleading Advertisements On Brand Hate: Exploring Emotional Drivers And The Moderating Role Of Brand Popularity

The growing concern over misleading advertisements has emerged as a key focus in marketing, especially regarding their effect on consumer emotions. While traditional advertising emphasizes fostering brand loyalty through authentic communication and product promotion, deceptive practices like exaggeration have been shown to provoke negative consumer reactions. This study investigates the role of misleading advertisements in the formation of brand hate. Using the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model, the research illustrates how advertisement deception and exaggeration (stimulus) lead to perceptions of brand hypocrisy and negative emotional responses (organism), which ultimately result in brand hate (behaviour). A survey of 728 cosmetic product users in India was conducted, and the data was analysed using AMOS 25.0. The findings reveal that ad deception and ad exaggeration are key drivers of brand hypocrisy and negative emotional connections, which fuel brand hate, validating the relationships within the stimulus-organism-response model. Additionally, the study identifies brand popularity as a moderating factor in the relationship between stimulus and organism within the model. This research advances S-O-R model by illustrating how misleading advertising acts as a stimulus that leads to significant behavioural outcomes, such as brand hate. It also enriches brand hate theory by pinpointing misleading advertisements and the resulting emotional responses as key precursors to brand hate. Practically, the study provides marketers with critical insights, emphasizing the dangers of deceptive advertising and underscoring the importance of transparency and credibility in communication strategies.