ASSOCIATION FOR CONSUMER RESEARCH Labovitz School of Business & Economics, University of Minnesota Duluth, 11 E. Superior Street, Suite 210, Duluth, MN 55802 The Undesired Discounting Effect of Budget Brands: How Brand Positioning Affects Perceptions of Customer Service Representatives’ Human Qualities Alexander Henkel, Maastricht University, The Netherlands Johannes Boegershausen, University of British Columbia, Canada Karl Aquino, University of British Columbia, Canada Jos Lemmink, Maastricht University, The Netherlands Much prior research finds that consumers draw inferences about brands based on the humans representing them, employees. In contrast, we demonstrate the opposite effect; brands shape consumers’ perceptions of employees’ human qualities. Specifically, we show that a budget positioning leads consumers to dehumanize and act less prosocially toward employees. [to cite]: Alexander Henkel, Johannes Boegershausen, Karl Aquino, and Jos Lemmink (2016) ,"The Undesired Discounting Effect of Budget Brands: How Brand Positioning Affects Perceptions of Customer Service Representatives’ Human Qualities", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 44, eds. Page Moreau and Stefano Puntoni, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 42-47. [url]: http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/1022159/volumes/v44/NA-44 [copyright notice]: This work is copyrighted by The Association for Consumer Research. For permission to copy or use this work in whole or in part, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at http://www.copyright.com/.