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More and more, firms are taking public stances on political and social issues. In the past few years, Nike created an ad campaign centered around Colin Kaepernick, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Delta publicly severed ties with the NRA, and dozens of CEOs from major companies made public statements opposing the 2017 immigration ban. Although firms have always been involved in politics, it has traditionally been behind the scenes (Lawton McGuire, and Rajwani 2013), rather than in public. Moreover, there is little precedent for firms taking stances on political and social issues that are not directly relevant to the firm’s value proposition. For this reason, little is known about how taking a stance impacts consumer behavior. Do firms benefit from taking public political stances? What happens when firms do choose to take a stance? And, when they do choose to take a stance, how can they maximize the impact on consumers? Our session sheds light on these questions. Paper 1 (Silver and Alex Shaw) explores why it may be beneficial for firms to take political stances, even at the risk of alienating some consumers. They find that despite its intuitive appeal, remaining neutral can harm trust, even relative to outright opposition. This effect occurs because consumers interpret neutrality as concealed opposition and therefore as a dishonest impression management tactic. The next two papers explore what happens when companies do take a stance. Paper 2 (Boegershausen and Watson) focuses on what happens to reviews after a brand takes a political stance. They find that the resulting political review storms include reviews from supporters and …