What consumer brands typically do not do is compliment those rivals – they wouldn’t want to grant an adversary free publicity, said Keisha Cutright, a marketing professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. But new research from Cutright published in the Journal of Marketing suggests a little goodwill can pay off.
Nearly a dozen experiments with almost 4,000 people show that a brand that compliments a competitor ends up boosting its own reputation and sales.
“You don’t want to spend your media dollars talking about the competition, but there are times when it makes sense to say something nice, and at the same time, signal who you are as a brand,” Cutright said. “That message is that they’re a warm, caring brand that you can trust, which implies they’re also going to be considerate and warm to their customers.”
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