Are companies beholden to bias? The impact of leader race on consumer purchasing behavior

•A leader’s race can influence consumer purchasing behavior.•Leader race can trigger stereotyping thereby influencing leader appraisals and consumer purchasing.•The impact of leader race on customers appears greater for failing organizations.•Motivation to suppress racial stereotypes attenuates the impact of leader race on consumers.

Given that racial stereotypes often influence leader appraisals, many businesses assume consumers will respond unfavorably to Black leaders. Recent research, however, suggests observers may suppress negative stereotypes of Black leaders when they head high-performing organizations. We integrate theory on implicit leadership and motivated social cognition to better understand how leader stereotype application and suppression influence consumer purchasing behavior. Across archival studies, a classroom exercise, and an experiment, we found that customers (real and prospective) appraised Black leaders less favorably than White leaders, resulting in lower patronage only when motivated to view leaders stereotypically. Namely, significant consumer bias against companies with Black leaders emerged only when organizational failure was accompanied by (a) unfamiliarity with the leader(s) in question, (b) greater societal acceptance of racist behavior (i.e., in the past), or (c) high consumer desire to bask-in-reflected-glory of an organization.