Do you want to be roasted? The boundaries of using dark humor as a brand-to-brand communication strategy

PurposeThis study examines the use of dark humor in brand-to-brand communications on social media and its impact on consumers' brand perceptions. In particular, this study looks at roasting messages in which a brand humorously insults its peers. Design/methodology/approachThe authors used a sampling method to recruit 286 participants from the United States. They employed an ANOVA and Tukey's post hoc analysis to test the hypotheses, as well as Hayes' PROCESS to test the mediation and moderation effects, including Johnson-Neyman procedure. FindingsThe authors found that not all customers find roasting messages funny. Rather, consumers' personality and age will influence their perceived humor of the messages and their brand evaluations. Customers who are young and extroverted are likely to believe roasting messages to be funny. They thus perceive the brand to be cooler and more sincere when using such a communication approach, compared to when the brand neutrally interacts with others. Meanwhile, brands may find less success with old and introverted customers. Originality/valueThis research sheds light on how the consumers' perception of humor in a roasting type of brand-to-brand communication has an impact on consumers' psychological perceptions of brand coolness and brand sincerity. To guide practitioners, it explored how the interaction between a consumer's personality and age moderates the aforementioned relationship.