EXPRESS: Political Extremism and Post-Purchase Customer–Brand Relationships

Political polarization continues to intensify and has inspired substantial research on how individuals’ political identities shape their behaviors as consumers. This stream of research has focused primarily on differences between those on the “left” and the “right” of the political spectrum, offering valuable insights but addressing only one dimension of polarization. The current research introduces the other, currently overlooked dimension, political extremism, and examines how individuals closer to each end of the ideological spectrum differ in post-purchase decision-making from those with weaker or moderate identities. It shows that politically extreme consumers exhibit stronger repurchase likelihood, potentially deriving benefits associated with committing to brands. However, they are also less sensitive to price increases by their chosen brands, even when viable alternatives exist, increasing the risk of overpaying and undermining their financial well-being. These effects are driven by politically extreme consumers’ beliefs in the superiority of their consumption choices and are more pronounced in the presence of threats that originate from the consumption domain (e.g., focal brand product/service failures, competitor new product launches), whereas they diminish in the presence of threats originating from the political domain (e.g., customer–focal brand political misalignment, customer–competitor political alignment).