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Knowledge@Australian School of Business  'Moral Decoupling': How
Consumers Justify Supporting a Tarnished Brand  Published:
September 18, 2012 in Knowledge@Australian School of Business
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Article  Wharton marketing professor Americus Reed and doctoral
students Amit Bhattacharjee (now a visiting professor at
Dartmouth) and Jonathan Berman were chatting at the department
holiday party when the conversation turned to current events. It
was December 2009, and the hottest topic of the day was the
Tiger Woods scandal. The golf prodigy with the squeaky-clean
image had just confessed to infidelity in a tangled drama that
cost Woods, at the time the highest-paid athlete in the world,
millions of dollars in dropped endorsements.  But would Woods'
lack of faithfulness to his wife tarnish the sterling reputation
he built with fans who had followed his