Does your left hand know what your right hand is doing? Impacts of athletes’ pre-transgression philanthropic behavior on consumer post-transgression evaluation

et al. 2023

IJSMS

Self Cite

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to examine how pre-scandal associations and scandal types interactively influence consumer judgment and negative electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM).Design/methodology/approachDrawing from cognitive dissonance theory and associative memory network model, the online experiments (Amazon Mechanical Turk; Nexperiment 1 = 146 and Nexperiment 2 = 189) were conducted to examine the effects of positive pre-scandal associations (performance vs pro-social) and scandal types (performance-related vs -unrelated) on consumer blame and eWOM toward scandalized athletes. Data were analyzed by employing t-test (experiment 1), Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) and PROCESS Model 8 (experiment 2) to test the hypotheses.FindingsThe findings highlight that positive pre-scandal association demonstrated both protecting and backfiring effects depending on the types of scandals. Specifically, when performance-related scandals emerged, consumers made more negative blame judgment of athletes with salient performance association, relative to pro-social association. Inversely, when performance-unrelated scandals occurred, athletes with salient pro-social association were more likely to be blamed. Regarding eWOM, consumers generate more negative eWOM when athletes with pre-performance associations are involved with performance-related scandals. This pattern of the result was not observed when athletes' pro-social association and performance-unrelated scandals were prominent.Originality/valueThe current work adds consumers' negative eWOM toward scandalized athletes to the literature as a predictor of how athletes' pre-scandal association with consumers and scandal types are related. The findings indicate that consumers feel greater dissonance and generate more negative eWOM when athletes' pre-scandal associations and scandal types are closely related.

Section: Theoretical Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 70%

Section: Theoretical Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of pre-scandal associations of athlete endorsers and scandal types on consumer blame and eWOM

Sato

et al. 2023

IJSMS

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“…The concept of forgiveness refers to the state of alleviating criticism or reprisal of unethical behavior (Richardson, 1962), and drives consumers to adopt relationship-building actions against offenders (Worthington and Scherer, 2004). In the context of athlete scandals, it is important to understand consumers' forgiveness, because the scandalized athletes and associated entities make tremendous Scandalized athletes and endorsements efforts to restore their tainted images in consumers' minds and seek public forgiveness (Lee and Babiak, 2019). In this regard, investigating the relationship between consumers' moral reasoning strategies and consumers' forgiveness, is of practical significance for athletes, agents, endorsers, and other stakeholders, to make informed decisions on how to effectively handle athlete scandals.…”

Section: Outcomes Of Moral Reasoningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does causal reasoning lead to moral reasoning? Consumers' responses to scandalized athletes and endorsements

Lee

Jang

et al. 2021

IJSMS

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Purpose Marketers and brand managers are subject to reputational crises when their endorsers are involved in scandals. To effectively manage such crises, it is imperative to understand (1) the underlying mechanisms through which consumers process negative information surrounding morally tainted endorsers, and (2) how these mechanisms affect consumer behavior in the context of athlete scandals. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on attribution theory and the moral reasoning strategy framework, we investigate the impact of attribution on moral reasoning strategies, and the impact of such strategies on consumers' responses to scandalized athletes and endorsements. Findings Overall, our results demonstrate that the same scandal can be evaluated differently, depending on its information, including the consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency of the scandal. The results of Study 1 show that in the context of an on-field scandal, individuals engage in a sequential cognitive process in which they go through attribution, the choice of a moral reasoning strategy, and ultimately a response. The results of Study 2 reveal that in the context of an off-field scandal, attribution directly influences consumers' responses. Originality/value We extend the existing literature on the moral reasoning of athlete scandals by suggesting that attribution is a determinant of moral reasoning choice in the context of on-field scandals. We also extend the sports marketing and consumer behavior literature by suggesting that consumers' diverse reactions to athlete scandals depend on their attribution patterns and moral reasoning choices.

“…Because a philanthropic foundation often operates for an image-enhancing purpose, researchers have found that consumer skepticism plays a major role in determining the effects of philanthropic activity on the images of athletes and teams. Specifically, the positive effects of philanthropic activities on enhancing support of an athlete-owned foundation disappear or even become negative when consumers are skeptical about the true motives behind those actions (Lee & Babiak, 2019).…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of Hedonic and Meaningful Messages on Sport Consumers’ Responses to Athlete Foundations: A Focus on Fan Identification Level

Jang

Lee

et al. 2019

Communication & Sport

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Athletes oftentimes own and direct their own philanthropic foundations to make positive prosocial impacts at every level, from global down to local. A key challenge for these foundations is to communicate effectively with their target audiences to obtain support from them. By drawing from the construal-level theory and athlete identification literature, the current study examines the effects of different types of messages (hedonic vs. meaningful) on sport consumers’ supportive behaviors toward an athlete’s charitable foundation as a function of fans’ level of athlete identification. Results indicated that the use of a meaningful message lead to greater degrees of supportive behavior from sport consumers with low levels of athlete identification than on- and off-field hedonic messages. In contrast, among highly identified sport consumers, both hedonic and meaningful messages elicited greater support for an athlete-owned foundation.