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The purpose of the comprehensive model presented here is to explain the underlying mechanism by which corporations can repair customer trust after negative publicity. The study sets out to examine corporate informational, affective, and functional initiatives managers take to influence three trustworthiness factorscompetence, benevolence, and integrity-and to elicit forgiveness. A scenario-based experiment conducted to test the conceptual model found support for most hypotheses. According to the results, rebuilding a trustworthy image and earning consumer forgiveness are crucial steps in repairing consumer trust. A clear pattern of influential factors for different trustworthiness aspects was found, indicating that affective initiatives are the most effective strategy in shaping a corporate image of integrity and benevolence, and that providing sufficient information is a key activity for enhancing consumers' judgment about the firm's competence.

The authors propose an augmented conceptual model explaining consumer preferences for global brands versus local brands in emerging markets and test the model using data from a Chinese consumer sample. The model adds high brand-identity expressiveness as well as high trust and positive affect toward these brands. The results support these additions and replicate previous findings that brand quality and prestige are important links between perceived brand globalness (PBG) and perceived brand localness (PBL) and favorable behavioral intentions. The most novel finding is that both PBG and PBL can enhance a brand's identity expressiveness. The results establish the mediating roles of these additional variables between PBG/PBL and behavioral intentions and also identify the incremental explanatory value of these additional mediators, which have been neglected in previous global branding research. Furthermore, PBG—which affects behavioral intentions through pathways of brand prestige, trust, and affect—is more influential than PBL, which operates mainly through brand identity expressiveness.

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