139. Brand Activism: Hurt or Help?
Sourjo Mukherjee
November 5, 2020
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Today we’re speaking with Dr. Sourjo Mukherjee an Assistant Professor in the marketing department at Audencia Business School, France. He is a consumer researcher who specializes in behavioral issues in marketing. His current projects focus on understanding how brand activism shapes consumer-brand relationships, the effects of consumers’ morality and political ideology on their brand evaluations, and the effect of new media and technologies on consumer behavior.
This episode focuses on brand activism and its impact on consumer behavior.
Topics include:
How corporate responsibility differs from brand activism and why understanding the difference matters.
Why understanding your consumer’s sense of self and identity will help your brand identify the areas of brand activism that are safe and flag those that might not be.
Why understanding a consumer’s moral strategy is useful for brands.
How to best blunt the impact when a spokesperson or corporate leader (former or current) gets a brand into hot water on a polarizing issue.
How the importance of brand activism varies depending upon the sector in which the brand operates.
Click here for the research article
Dr. Sourjo Mukherjee completed his doctorate and advanced research master’s degrees from ESSEC Business School, France. He also holds a postgraduate degree in management from Indian Institute of Management at Rohtak and an undergraduate degree in engineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata.
Sourjo has experience of working in different roles (sales, business development, brand management, supply chain) in multiple companies across several sectors (e.g., Schneider Electric, Tata Motors, and Berger Paints).
Dr. Niek Althuizen is an Associate Professor at the Department of Marketing, Sales, and Communication at Montpellier Business School, France. Niek’s research interests are creativity in marketing, crowdsourcing novel consumer ideas, managerial decision making and decision support systems, product design and aesthetics, and consumer ideology and brand disinformation. His work has been published, among others, in the American Sociological Review, Creativity Research Journal, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Marketing Letters, Psychology & Marketing, Journal of Management Information Systems, and the Information Systems Journal. He is co-author of the research paper that formed the basis of this podcast conversation.
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Dr. Sourjo Mukherjee
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