If all their products seem the same, all the parts within a product seem the same too: How brand homogeneity polarizes product experiences

• Published in: International journal of research in marketing Vol. 38; no. 3; pp. 698 - 714
• Main Authors: Smith, Robert W., Keller, Kevin Lane
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01.09.2021
• Subjects: Branding; Categorization; Entitativity; Essence; Homogeneity; Product judgment; Homogeneity; Entitativity; Branding; Categorization; Product judgment; Essence
• ISSN: 0167-8116; 1873-8001
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ijresmar.2020.11.001

•Mere membership in a homogeneous group polarizes judgments of individuals.•If a group seems homogeneous, the parts making up a group member seem homogeneous too.•Products from more homogenous brands elicit more extreme experience-based judgments.•Five antecedents to brand homogeneity perceptions are identified. Many different factors affect brand homogeneity, including the different products associated with a brand, how they are made, and how they are branded. How does the perceived homogeneity of a brand’s offered products, in turn, affect consumers’ experiences with those products? Nine experiments reveal that consumers have more polarized judgments of product experiences when the sampled products are perceived to belong to more homogeneous brands. When a consumption experience is positive, the consumer has an even more positive experience when they think the sampled product came from a homogeneous brand; however, when a consumption experience is negative, the consumer has an even more negative experience when they think the sampled product came from a homogeneous brand. This polarization occurs because the individual product inherits the brand-level quality of perceived internal consistency—when a brand seems homogeneous (i.e., consisting of homogeneous products), consumers also perceive any individual product from the brand as similarly consisting of homogeneous ingredients or parts. We suggest that brand homogeneity leads to selective processing of individual product experiences, which makes products seem more coherent, products rated faster, and ratings of different product ingredients or features more highly correlated. The perception that all of the parts within the individual sampled product are homogeneous in quality polarizes judgments of the product experience.