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Brands continue to be regarded as critical in the success of an organisation, serving as a key contributor to an organisation’s competitive advantage (McDonald, de Chernatony, & Harris, 2001). Research in branding has largely focused on the positive aspects, such as brand love, brand attachment (Japutra, Ekinci, & Simkin, 2014; Thomson, MacInnis, & Whan Park, 2005), with a dearth of research focusing on the negative aspects of branding such as brand hate, brand aversion and brand avoidance (Cherrier, 2009; Dalli, Gistri, & Romani, 2006; Lee, Conroy, & Motion, 2009a). Previous research on brand avoidance identified five types namely experiential avoidance, identity avoidance, moral avoidance, deficit-value avoidance and advertising (Knittel, Beurer, & Berndt, 2016; Lee, 2008; Lee et al., 2009a; Lee, Motion, & Conroy, 2009b) (see Figure 1). With previous research generally ignoring the role of advertising on negative brand aspects, this paper seeks to broaden our understanding by not only considering advertising but the role of communication as a type of brand avoidance.

Branding research focuses primarily on products and not services, leading to limited insights into service brand avoidance. Understanding service brand avoidance and its possible antecedents will provide marketers with insights into service brand avoidance behaviour of customers in an emerging market and was therefore identified as purpose of this study. Data were collected from 327 South African cell phone customers and subjected to an exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression analysis. Identity avoidance and experiential avoidance were found to be the strongest predictors of service brand avoidance. Advertising avoidance, in contrast, did not predict service brand avoidance. This research contributes by quantitatively exploring service brand avoidance and its antecedents, as identified by previous qualitative research.

In a competitive cell phone industry where consumers have a wide variety of cell phone brands to choose from, it is imperative for marketers to foster brand loyalty in order to establish enduring consumer-brand relationships. Nurturing brand romance has been suggested to marketers to cultivate emotional attachments between consumers and brands so as to increase brand loyalty. This study focussed on determining the extent to which the three underlying dimensions of brand romance, namely pleasure, arousal and dominance predict brand loyalty among cell phone users in the North West province. In total 371 respondents participated in the study. Results indicate that with respect to brand romance, respondents’ current cell phone brands generate brand pleasure and brand arousal, but that these brands are not dominant in their minds. Although respondents participating in the study did not exhibit strong levels of brand loyalty towards their current cell phone brands, the three underlying dimensions of brand romance are statistically significant predictors of brand loyalty.