Brand boycott in the banking industry

Introduction: In the highly competitive market, intangible assets are considered a very important factor for the success of an organization, and one of these assets is the brand (Vasily et al., 2023). Consumers have different emotional relationships with brands (Tiffani et al., 2022). It is possible that while some people are in love with a brand, some people are indifferent to it and some people have a sense of hatred towards it and boycott that brand (Makizadeh et al., 2017). Brand boycott is defined as one of the strong negative components in looking at a brand and it consists of; Not buying from that brand and giving negative recommendations to friends about the desired brand (Kim et al., 2022). When consumers experience inappropriate services, they express feelings that indicate their hatred for the brand that provides such services, and they not only boycott that brand, but also share their negative experiences with others. These negative emotions cause adverse consequences along with avoiding brand encouragement and reducing brand performance (Beatriz et al., 2021). Companies are facing increasingly negative consumer sentiments towards their brands. These feelings, which are precisely caused by the lack of love for the brand or consumer dissatisfaction, often lead to the reduction or termination of consumption, complaints and brand boycotts (Dalakas et al., 2023). Consumers who like a brand are part of the important goals of companies; Because they are more loyal and tend to comment favorably on the brand and show resistance to negative information (Shujaa and Sadegh Vaziri, 2017). On the other hand, concepts with a negative semantic load such as brand boycott, which is perhaps the strongest and most important negative emotion that consumers may feel towards brands, have largely been forgotten as a research topic. In the branding literature, consumers' positive feelings about the brand have been discussed many times; But researchers have generally paid very little attention to negative feelings about the brand, especially the concept of brand boycott (Sampdero, 2017). A quick look at the banking industry in Iran shows that a large part of consumers express opinions and behaviors towards some banking brands, which is a reflection of various aspects of their negative attitude towards the mentioned brands. Opinions and behaviors that are in the form of negative advisory advertisements and even in some cases boycotting the brand and not buying from it. According to the mentioned materials, the main problem of this research is to answer the basic question, what are the factors affecting brand boycott in the banking industry?
Methodology: This research is practical in terms of purpose. In short, considering the onion of the research process, it can be said that this research is interpretive in terms of research philosophies. The approach of this research is both inductive model presentation and deductive model testing, and mixed research strategies such as theme analysis, structural equations, etc. have also been used, which are actually a combination of qualitative and quantitative research strategies. In the current research, semi-structured interviews were used to identify the components of brand boycott by customers in the banking industry. The statistical community at this stage included 16 experts (university professors, bank managers and assistants, and researchers familiar with the research topic). The sampling of experts in this research continued until the discovery and analysis process reached the point of theoretical saturation. The theoretical saturation was such that the researcher tried to collect more information after the emergence of the initial discoveries so that the identification of new categories would have more clarity and meaning. This work continued until the researcher felt that the experts were no longer providing new information. Next, the qualitative data was analyzed using the theme analysis method, and at the end of this stage, the factors affecting the boycott of the brand by customers in the banking industry were identified.
Discussion and Results: The present study was conducted with the aim of identifying and ranking factors affecting brand boycott in the banking industry. In line with the aim of the research, first in the qualitative part of the research, using semi-structured interviews, a total of 100 basic codes were identified, which were finally grouped into 14 main factors. These factors were evaluated in the form of a proposed research model in the banking industry. After collecting the research data using a researcher-made questionnaire, which was the output of the qualitative part of the research, and analyzing them using structural equations (using Visual PLS software), it was finally determined that all 14 identification factors have a significant impact on brand sanctions in the banking industry. These factors include: quality of service, quality of interaction, quality of response, facilities, service rate, poor customer-oriented culture, party game, inefficiency of marketing and advertising activities, environmental factors, bureaucracy and strict rules, lack of personnel, attitude of managers and inefficiency of the system. Turn ratings. Fuzzy AHP technique has been used to rank the identified factors. The ranking results also showed that; Service quality, poor customer-oriented culture and service rate are the most important factors affecting brand boycott by customers in the banking industry.
Conclusion: Banks consider protesting and complaining customers as important and show appropriate and positive reaction after hearing their protest. They inquire about the reasons for customer dissatisfaction and complaints and collect information from the customer about shortcomings and weaknesses. Also, banks should design a suitable plan to know the interests and preferences of their customers, especially key customers. Banks should identify factors affecting customers' purchases and their purchase motives and predict factors that may cause customer objections. Banks should welcome the ideas of customers and use their opinions to convey to their customers the sense of the importance of customers for the company. Bank personnel should be courteous and respectful to customers and strengthen their knowledge and skills in dealing with customers. The behavioral competencies of employees and professional ethics and sales ethics should be strengthened, and appropriate rewards should be considered by the company for personnel who have a sense of altruism and citizenship.