The impact of online brand roasting on brand attitude and brand preference: moderating effects of other brand versus consumer targets

Purpose Responding to a prevalent trend on X (formerly Twitter) of brands “roasting” both consumers and other brands with sarcastic and somewhat disparaging humorous posts, this study aims to investigate how these actions are perceived by consumers and their implications for branding efforts, namely, brand attitude and brand preference. Design/methodology/approach Four experimental studies examine a variety of roasting-type posts against non-roasting control posts, controlling for a set of covariates and alternative explanations. These studies use analyses appropriate for the data and hypotheses, including Hayes PROCESS models to test mediation, moderation and moderated mediation. Findings The results show that roasting-type posts (compared to non-roasting control posts) can result in lower brand attitude and lower brand preference, both mediated by perceived appropriateness. The final study shows that the target of the roasting posts – consumers versus other brands – moderates the mediated effect on brand preference such that a business-to-consumer conversation has stronger negative results than a business-to-business conversation. Practical implications Marketers who focus on top-of-funnel metrics may be persuaded to use online roasting in branding efforts or communication techniques to enhance engagement, but this practice may be to the detriment of lower funnel metrics because of its negative effects on perceived appropriateness, brand attitude and brand preference. Originality/value This paper broadens research on the use of disparagement humor in marketing communications, with resultant implications on branding efforts. This is the first research, to the best of the authors’ research, to examine both the mediating effects of perceived appropriateness and the moderating effects of the roasting humor target on brand perceptions. The implications for both academic researchers and industry practitioners are meaningful.