New publication: Understanding customer grief in brand relationships
What happens when a beloved brand suddenly changes—or disappears altogether? A new study by Associate Professor Adele Berndt, MMTC member at Jönköping International Business School, and Dr. Kieran Tierney, Senior Lecturer at RMIT University, explores this question by examining how customers experience grief when a brand they love is altered or discontinued.
Published in the Journal of Business Research (2026), the article — “Understanding customer grief in brand relationships” — introduces grief as an underexplored but powerful emotional response within marketing. Using a netnographic study of over 4,000 customer posts across online brand communities, the authors apply the Kübler-Ross model of grief to analyse how consumers move through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and eventual acceptance in response to unexpected brand changes.
The study shows that brand decisions—such as reformulation or discontinuation—can disrupt deeply rooted emotional and cultural connections, sometimes evoking reactions comparable to personal bereavement. Customers often process this grief collectively through social media, transforming private emotion into public dialogue that can significantly shape a brand’s reputation.
For organisations, the research highlights the importance of recognising emotional brand attachments, engaging customers in co-creation before implementing major changes, and responding empathetically to online feedback to prevent reputational harm.
This research illuminates the emotional and cultural dimensions of digital consumer engagement , the impact of organisational change on stakeholder relationships, and the need to understand diverse consumer experiences across social and cultural contexts.
