On 20th March 2023, the Department of Management and Marketing successfully held the Departmental Seminar, “Nice Brands Finish First: Consumers Support Well-Intentioned Brands More Than High-Ability Brands Following Identical Moral Transgressions”, delivered by Prof. Yexin Jessica Li.
Prof. Yexin Jessica Li is a marketing professor at the University of Kansas. Her substantive interests are in social perception, corporate social responsibility, and prosocial behavior. She has published dozens of peer-reviewed articles with thousands of citations in top journals in psychology and business, including Journal of Marketing and Journal of Consumer Research, where she serves on the editorial review board. In the seminar, she shared her research project regarding how consumers respond to moral transgressions allegedly committed by brands that are perceived as having either good intentions or high abilities. Her research team found that well-intentioned brands garner more consumer support than high-ability brands following the same moral offenses. This effect is robust across different industries and real, hypothetical, severe, and mild transgressions.
