Media amplification of a brand crisis and its affect on brand trust

Abstract

This paper explores the ways in which consumers' brand trust during a brand crisis is affected through direct experience versus when it is amplified through mass media. By using case-study methodology, our findings reveal that generalised public images of a product crisis initiate a public perception of risk, which provides more negative effects on brand trust than the actual consumers' experience does. We introduce the media as a third partner influencing the trust relationship between consumers and brands, and offer suggestions for restoring and preserving customers' brand trust.     

Order effect of multi-touchpoints on Generation Z consumers

Abundant user-generated content has increasingly driven consumers to form or modify their purchasing decisions based on interactions with other consumers, although the extant research overlooks the customer-to-customer (C2C) interaction touchpoints. Based on the customer journey characteristics of cross-channel and multi-frequency interactions, this study explores the impact of interaction valence and interaction channel sequence on Generation Z consumers' purchase attitudes from the perspective of attitude modification process. Using a scenario-based experimental design in a restaurant setting, we sample 616 Generation Z students. Findings suggest that C2C interactions that have the same valence at each touchpoint strengthen Generation Z consumers' initial purchase attitude, whereas inconsistent valences modify purchase attitudes. Our results reveal that a negative-to-positive ordering is more conducive to the formation of a positive purchase attitude than a positive-to-negative ordering. Moreover, the cross-channel sequence of a customer journey moderates the inconsistent valence order such that the positive-to-negative order improves purchase attitude more than the negative-to-positive order. This study explains theoretically the difference of ambivalent experiences on Generation Z consumer attitudes. We provide practical suggestions for multi-channel restaurant enterprises to successfully employ customer journey touchpoint management.     

Investigating the impact of intelligent personal assistants on the purchase intentions of Generation Z consumers: The moderating role of brand credibility

Consumers increasingly use intelligent personal assistants for shopping, given their advantages of being hands-free and voice-controlled, enabling individuals to multi-task during interactions, and identifying users through voice printing. Members of Generation Z (Gen Z), the world's most populous generation, who focus on experiences and innovation and are familiar with using the internet, are increasingly using smart technologies. However, the factors that influence Gen Z consumers' purchase intentions as they use intelligent personal assistants (IPAs) are unknown. Drawing on the computers are social actors (CASA) paradigm, this paper explores how the intelligent features of IPAs affect Gen Z consumers' purchase intentions and investigates the moderating effect of brand credibility. Using structural equation modeling on a sample of 428 Gen Z consumers who use IPAs, the results show that personalization and a conversational tone have significant positive effects on informational support and emotional support. Autonomy and responsiveness have significant positive effects on informational support. Informational support and emotional support have a positive impact on purchase intentions. Brand credibility positively moderates the relationships between informational support and purchase intentions and between emotional support and purchase intentions. This study deepens our understanding of the antecedents of purchase intentions that affect Gen Z's use of IPAs and provides practical guidance for the development of IPAs. In addition, the results could help companies develop strategies to improve brand credibility to increase the purchase intentions of Gen Z consumers.     

Perceptions that matter: perceptual antecedents and moderators of healthy food consumption

Unhealthy eating patterns present in most Western countries pose a serious threat to economic welfare and have severe consequences for the health and quality of life of the individual consumer. The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a conceptual model for understanding how health authorities and marketers can affect consumption of healthy food – and ultimately body mass index (BMI) – by addressing perceptual antecedents of consumers' involvement and health competencies. A qualitative (n = 16) pilot study and a consumer panel survey (n = 599) assisted in completing this task. The obtained structural equation modelling results confirmed that increasing consumers' competencies concerning healthy food consumption may improve the healthiness of their food behaviour, and ultimately reduce their BMI. Notably, these effects may occur even for consumers who perceive healthy food consumption to be a challenge. Our results also revealed that it may be problematic to improve health competencies for food consumers who are less involved in healthy food consumption. However, our study shows that two perceptual factors, ‘personal food identity’ (the extent to which consumers believe that their health identity is linked to their food behaviour) and ‘unhealthy food taste belief’ (the extent to which consumers believe that unhealthy food is more enjoyable and tastier than healthy food), may assist health authorities and marketers in increasing consumers' involvement in healthy food consumption.     

Factors influencing consumers' purchase decision-making in O2O business model: Evidence from consumers' overall evaluation

Online-to-offline (O2O) has become a rapidly growing e-commerce model worldwide, but the factors influencing consumers' purchase decision-making have not been examined well. After exploring the working mechanism of the O2O model, we extract eleven indexes of consumers' overall evaluation in the O2O model with Crawlzilla and R techniques. Social network analysis (SNA) is adopted to build social networks reflecting consumers' overall evaluation in the O2O model. Based on the modified social network and the extracted subgraph, this study (N = 768) reveals consumers' overall evaluation behavior patterns in the O2O model by calculating network density, central potential, edge betweenness. The results show that shoppers overall evaluate the eleven indexes, especially perceived product quality, online product price, promotion intensity, business reputation, and product brand, which reflects the significant associations between the indexes. Among all the eleven evaluation indexes, perceived product quality, online product price, and business reputation dominate consumers’ decision-making behavior. When making purchase decisions, consumers not only overall consider online product price, perceived product quality, and business reputation but also balance perceived product quality, business reputation, and promotion intensity. Finally, we make some suggestions on marketing strategy for e-commerce companies.     

Hedonic consumption experience in videogaming: A multidimensional perspective

Prior research primarily considers consumers' hedonic gaming experience, defined as an individual's level of pleasure, emotional gratification, and enjoyment from playing a videogame, from a unidimensional perspective. However, given the growing range of technology-enabled, hedonic game-related (e.g., aesthetic, competition, or social) elements, we argue that this one-dimensional view is rapidly becoming dated. Correspondingly, we propose a broadened multi-dimensional perspective of videogamers' hedonic experience, as informed by hedonic consumption theory and the theory of planned behavior. Using a sample of 294 gamers, our results confirm the existence of gamers' multi (i.e., seven)-dimensional hedonic consumption experience comprising escapism, fantasy, role-projection, emotional involvement, enjoyment, arousal, and sensory experience. We also find that gamers' emotional involvement, enjoyment, arousal, and sensory experience, in particular, drive their attitude formation toward a videogame, in turn impacting users' videogaming intent and behavior. We conclude by discussing implications that arise from our research.     

‘Blame it on marketing’: consumers' views on unsustainable consumption

This paper addresses consumers' attitudes towards consumption, the extent to which excessive consumption is perceived as an environmental problem and what consumers perceive as their personal responsibility vs. that of marketing for this consumption. Findings from a focus group and a survey administered to lecturers of a university in Portugal are reported. A critical reflection upon the findings reveals that participants view consumption as excessive and mostly due to marketing, but do not associate high levels of consumption with environmental damage. The consumers surveyed did not accept personal responsibility for excessive consumption, and many of them do not perceive their actions to have a significant impact on the environment. The high educational level of our sample makes these findings of particular concern. This paper feeds the debate on sustainable marketing and expresses the need to address consumers', as well as marketing's, place in sustainability. Implications of this study are drawn and directions for future research are suggested.     

Information overload and fake news sharing: A transactional stress perspective exploring the mitigating role of consumers’ resilience during COVID-19

The spread of fake news in social networks has become a major concern for various sectors of society, including retail and service providers, some of whom have suffered from decreasing sales due to misinformation consumers shared online. The current COVID-19 crisis has added to the surrounding hysteria, as fake news during crises can heighten negative behavioural responses in consumers, such as irrational panic buying or taking false medical precautionary measures. In fact, driven by the ubiquitous social media landscape, the dissemination of misinformation and the overarching overabundance of information have been major challenges of the pandemic. Given that current research offers little insight into the processes behind the sharing of fake news among consumers and that research on consumer-centred mitigating mechanisms is missing, this study explores the relationship between information overload, fake news sharing, and the overlooked concept of consumers' resilience as a potential shield as viewed through the lens of the current crisis. Structural equation modelling is applied to cross-sectional data from 241 social media users. Drawing from theories of transactional stress and psychological resilience, it is demonstrated that information overload leads to an increased likelihood of fake news sharing by increasing consumers' psychological strain. Furthermore, the study shows that consumers' resilience has the power to mitigate the drastic effects of this negative chain of influence by inhibiting each of the processual components. The results have important implications extending beyond crises. Measures should be taken to enhance consumers’ resilience amidst technology-induced stressors while altering the information environment confronting consumers.     

Resolving the complexity in Gen Z's envy occurrence: A cross-cultural perspective

Envy is an impactful emotion on consumer behaviors, yet envy is quite complex to be comprehended due to its two different forms (malicious and benign). Therefore, it is significant to find out the factors occurring envy to consume to understand the impact and consequences of envy. This empirical study improves our understanding of envy occurrence (malicious or benign) in Generation Z (Gen Z) consumers by comparing two countries (the United States and Mexico) as representing individualistic and collectivistic cultures. We apply complexity theory as a basis for the configurational model, which we test using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. We use three configurations—personality, attitudes, and attached importance to participants on social networking sites—to explore causal recipes leading to malicious and benign envy. The findings of this study highlight the differences in Gen Z consumers' envy occurrence regarding configurational factors. In addition to said factors, this research indicates that culture plays a significant role in Gen Z's envy occurrence, thus contributing to the current knowledge set.     

“Take it or leave it?”: Evidence on cultural differences affecting return behaviour for Gen Z

Both culture and age have a direct impact on consumers' shopping behaviour. Similarly, this paper explores consumers’ return behaviour in two different cultural contexts, China and Italy, characterized by low/high individualism vs. high/low collectivism. To this end, the research employs a qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews collected in May and June 2020 for a sample of Generation Z consumers in China and Italy. Results show differences and similarities affecting consumers' willingness to return in the different stages of effective purchase behaviour. For instance, in the pre-purchase stage, Chinese consumers often show a limited interest in return policies since they usually prefer not to return and repurchase otherwhere the product to maximize their cost-benefit trade-off. In contrast, when retailers adopt return policies, Italian consumers are more interested in feeling protected against the risk of wrong purchases. Instead, both samples are very attentive in return and refund efficiency in the post-purchase stage, which are perceived as two discriminating factors in terms of repurchase from the same retailers.This study offers theoretical and managerial insights towards consumers' return behaviour, offering new directions for future studies.     

Effects of Conditional Sales Promotion Tactics on Consumers' Feelings of Unfairness

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this research is to demonstrate the negative effects of the conditional sales promotion tactics on nonpreferred consumers' feelings of unfairness from the viewpoint of motivation. A two-by-two between-subjects design experiment was conducted to examine the consumers' psychological mechanism. The results show that three types of consumers' perceptions—tactic attractiveness, task difficulty, and tactic irrationality—positively affected their feelings of unfairness. The results show an important mediating role among consumers' perceptions, short-term consumption intention and long-term satisfaction. This research provides new insights for future research and concrete strategic suggestions for retailers.     

Outlet patronage in on-the-go consumption: An analysis of patronage preference drivers for convenience outlets versus traditional retail outlets

This study investigates patronage preferences of consumers who purchase and consume food and beverages while they are on-the-go (on-the-go consumption). The focus is on the drivers of patronage preferences for convenience outlets versus traditional retail outlets. A literature based model of patronage preferences is developed in this paper. It is tested based on data collected from a Dutch online sample (n=669) through binary logistic regression. The results reveal that significant relationships exist between patronage preferences in on-the-go consumption and the assortment offered as well as the opportunity to consume products without effort. Moreover, significant relationships between patronage preferences and consumers' time pressure as well as their health orientation exist. Consumers' income and their place of residence allow for limited inferences only. Based on the findings managerial recommendations are developed and avenues for further research are pointed out.     

The effects of perceived product-extrinsic cue incongruity on consumption experiences: The case of celebrity sponsorship

The level of congruity is determined by the degree of match or mismatch between an object and its associated attribute. Product evaluations are positively influenced when there is moderate incongruity between a product and its association; this finding is termed the moderate schema incongruity effect (Mandler 1982). The purpose of the current study was to investigate the influence of incongruity between a product and one of its extrinsic cues on consumers' product evaluations. Furthermore, we examined the moderating role of consumers' level of product knowledge. Incongruity was created by partnering a product with a sponsor. We found that consumers who were highly knowledgeable of the product gave the highest taste evaluations to the moderately incongruent product–sponsor pairing, whereas taste evaluations for consumers with low product knowledge did not differ across product–sponsor pairings. The results of our study have important practical implications for marketers, namely that product–sponsor fit can enhance consumers' consumption experiences.     

Convenience,Satisfaction, and Post-Purchase Behavior in India's Health Insurance Market

ABSTRACT

Understanding the antecedents and implications of “service convenience” has acquired added importance with consumers' growing desire for ease during product or service exchange. Although the effects of service convenience, as a first-order construct, on post-purchase behavior have been studied in different business contexts, not much has been done in the case of a second-order construct which has been attempted here. The present study seeks to examine the mediating role of consumers' satisfaction as well as the moderating role of organizational and consumer personal factors that have not been sufficiently explored in the marketing literature. Structural equation analysis is adopted to test the hypothesized relationships using responses from 424 consumers who have purchased health insurance from six leading insurers in India. The findings validated that the service convenience affects consumer satisfaction, which, in turn, plays both a direct and mediating role in influencing consumers' repurchase intention. However, the role of organizational and consumer personal factors as moderators between service convenience and consumers' satisfaction could only be established indirectly through post-hoc analysis, which calls for further research. The results have important implications for planning, designing, and managing the health insurance business.     

The pauper wears prada? How debt stress promotes luxury consumption

Being in debt prevails in the modern society, but little is known about the behavioral consequences of being under debt stress. Based on compensatory consumption theory, this paper examined how debt stress affects people's consumption behavior. Through a survey and three lab experiments, we found that: (1) debt stress increases consumers' luxury consumption intentions; (2) perceived status demotion mediates this relationship, such that debt stress leads to perceived status demotion, which in turn enhances consumers' luxury consumption intentions; (3) lay rationalism moderates this relationship, such that the positive relationship between debt stress and luxury consumption is stronger among less rational consumers. We concluded by discussing the theoretical and managerial implications of our findings.     

Enhancing frontline employee support during a product-harm crisis: Evidence and strategic managerial implications for firms

Product-harm crises can negatively affect a firm's corporate image, reputation, and credibility. This research investigates antecedents and factors that can impact the extent to which frontline employees will be supportive of their organization when the firm faces such a crisis. Leveraging social exchange theory and its focus on reciprocal exchanges, we theorize and test processes using regression models, which shed light on how managers can solicit employee support during crises situations by providing the frontline employees with ethical and supportive working conditions. To offer convergent validity across multiple methodologies, we also test the influence of experimental effects of the relative severity of a crisis and whether a firm was quick or slow in its response on frontline employee support. Furthermore, our research demonstrates that the firm's strengths in corporate social responsibility, the employees' organizational citizenship behavior, and employee organizational identification serially mediate the supportive relationship, which provides a unique contribution to the marketing literature. Finally, we provide managerial implications to further enhance frontline employee support.     

Measuring the impact of online reviews on consumer purchase decisions – A scale development study

Consumers' exposure to online reviews influences their online retail shopping behavior. They search for reviews while evaluating products for purchase decisions. Past studies have indicated that online reviews affect the credibility and trust of the sellers and the products they sell on online platforms. Keeping this in view, the current paper aims to develop and validate a scale to understand the impact of online reviews on consumer purchase decisions. Data were collected from 431 young online shoppers for this research. The initial exploratory factor analysis (EFA) results helped identify four factors, viz. source credibility, volume, language and comprehension, and relevance which constitute the scale. The scale was validated by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The study's findings fill the gap of having a standardized scale that online retailers can use as indicators to assist consumers in their online decision-making. The discussions and implications support consumers' susceptibility to online reviews, an essential source for product and brand information in facilitating online consumers' purchase decisions.     

How do U.S. and Canadian consumers value credence attributes associated with beef labels after the North American BSE crisis of 2003?

A consumer survey conducted in 2006 (n = 419), and therefore after the first confirmed bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) cases in North America in 2003, employs attribute‐based choice experiments for a cross‐country comparison of consumers' valuation of credence attributes associated with beef steak labels; specifically a guarantee that beef was tested for BSE, a guarantee that the steaks were produced without genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and a guarantee that beef steaks were produced without growth hormones and antibiotics. Considering consumers' socio‐economic characteristics, the results suggest that consumers in Montana (U.S.) and Alberta (Canada) are significantly heterogeneous in their valuation of the above attributes, although consumers' relative valuation of these process attributes does not appear to have changed since the 2003 BSE crisis in each region. Alberta consumers place a significant valuation on beef tested for BSE, which is striking because Canada's current legal environment does not permit testing and labelling of such beef by private industry participants. Montana consumers' valuation was found highest for a guarantee that the steaks were produced without GMO. Effective supply‐chain responses to consumers' valuation of credence attributes, for example, in the form of labelling, should therefore take consumers' heterogeneity into account.     

(Mis)trust in marketing: a reflection on consumers' attitudes and perceptions

Consumers are at the focal point of marketers' attention. However, while extensive research is devoted to understanding consumers' motivations, attitudes and behaviour, surprisingly little attention is given to the consumers' views of marketing itself. This paper explores consumers' attitudes towards marketing and their perceptions of it, reflecting critically upon their views. Since much criticism of marketing focuses on its role in promoting consumption, we also consider perceptions of current levels of consumption and the extent to which marketing is held responsible for them. Based on 29 in-depth interviews we find evidence suggesting the prevalence of negative attitudes towards marketing, especially associated with deceptive or dishonest campaigns, although marketing's informative role is acknowledged. Importantly, findings reveal a limited understanding of the discipline, suggesting a gap between the concept of marketing and consumers' perceptions of it. This paper sends marketers important messages from consumers and offers grounds for further debate.     

Mark Duckenfield, Stefan Altorfer, and Benedikt Koehler, eds. History of Financial Disasters, 1763-1995

In a History of Financial Disasters, Stefan Altorfer has assembleda collection of contemporary accounts and journal articles toexamine the history of financial crises since the eighteenthcentury. The collection is divided into three volumes with eachchapter devoted to one financial crisis. The first volume examinesimportant financial disasters prior to 1850, including earlyEuropean financial crises in 1763 and 1772–73, and theAssignat Inflation during the French Revolution. This is followedby a discussion of the 1918–1919 crisis of the SecondBank of the United States, the London Crisis of 1825, the Panic