Research On The Impact Of Brand Psychological Contract Violations On Consumer Boycott Behaviors

With the improvement of consumption level,today’s consumers’ expectations of brands have exceeded the exchange of economic interests,and even exceeded the social and emotional exchanges,pursuing higher value goals and self-realization.And this also echoes the five levels of human needs proposed by Maslow.Consumers not only pursue the most basic economic transactions(physiological and security needs),social and emotional interaction(social and respect needs),but also pursue higher levels of value Ideas and goals(self-actualization needs).However,there are frequent brands that push consumers feel dissatisfied or even boycott in real life.For example,in the course of brand publicity and interaction with consumers,brands originally intended to strengthen the interaction with consumers,enhance their brand image,and upgrade the consumer’s sense of identity.But facing the same advertisement or message,consumers do not always feel the same.Some consumers feel good,some feel indifferent,while others feel upset,angry,or even directly boycott.Therefore,from the perspective of psychological contract theory,we compare the direct and indirect effects of different dimensions of brand psychological contract violations(transactional,relational and ideological)on consumer boycott behaviors,and discuss the mediating role of brand identification and the moderating role of brand familiarity between brand psychological contract violations and boycott behaviors.Combined with in-depth individual interviews and questionnaire surveys,we use SPSS 26.0 software to carry out regression analysis on the relationship between various variables.The final results are as follows: 1)Brand psychological contract violations are positively correlated with consumer boycott behaviors.Ideological brand psychological contract violations have the greatest impact on boycott behaviors,followed by relational violations,but the direct impact of transactional violations on boycott behaviors is not significant.2)Brand identification acts as a mediator between brand psychological contract violations(and its three dimensions)and boycott behaviors.The negative impact of ideological violations on brand identification is greatest,followed by transactional violations and relational violations.Brand identification negatively affects boycott behaviors.3)Brand familiarity does not act as a moderator between brand psychological contract violations and brand identification.But brand familiarity acts as a moderator between brand psychological contract violations and consumer boycott behaviors.That is,under the condition of low brand familiarity,the positive impact of ideological violations on consumer boycott behaviors changes more widely.While under the condition of high brand familiarity,ideological violations do not positively influence consumer boycott behaviors.Thus,in the process of brand marketing or interaction with consumers,brands should make good use of brand psychological contract.For the benefit of the brand,brands ought to avoid excessive commitment or undue marketing which might stimulate consumers to engender higher expectations,as all higher expectations will in turn cause higher brand psychological contract violations,especially greater ideological brand psychological contract violations.Besides,ideological brand psychological contract violations should be paid more attention by the academic and business world.