The importance of factors influencing product-harm crisis management across different crisis extent levels: A conjoint analysis

Abstract

Product-harm crises can seriously impact the viability of a company. By considering the factors that affect the outcome of a crisis, organisations could manage crisis situations to minimise negative consequences. The aims of this paper are to (a) examine the importance of each factor of product-harm crises (that is, corporate social responsibility, organisational response, time and external effects) infl uencing consumer purchase intentions and (b) study variations in the purchase intentions across three different crisis extent levels. In order to investigate trade-offs and the relative importance of the above factors, conjoint analysis is used. The results reveal that organisational response and time are the most important factors in high-and medium-extent product-harm crises, whereas social responsibility and external effects mostly infl uence consumer purchase intentions in severe crises. Based on the importance of the factors, managerial implications are discussed.

The Influence of Crisis Management on Customer Purchase Intention

“…Following the framework from previous studies (Klein & Dawar, 2004;Laufer et al, 2005;Vassilikopoulou et al, 2009), consumers' perception about crisis management will have an impact on consumers' purchase intention post-crisis. Therefore, this study will include crisis communication in the theoretical model.…”

“…There are many definitions used by scholars like the time period without the crisis, the year of the sale of the product and the utterance of its recall. Time is described as the difference between the first signals of product dangerousness and the time it's been pulling out from the market, time taken to respond quickly to the crisis issues and fast response to consumer inquiries (Mowen, 1980;Standop, 2006;Roth et al, 2008;Hora et al, 2011& Magno, 2012 and as the time period without the crisis (Vassilikopoulou et al, 2009), the year of the deal of the product and the statement of its recall (Roth et al, 2008& Hora et al, 2011. Conversely, Johnson-hall (2012) termed and classified time into three stages which are Stage 1: end of production to time of defect detection, Stage 2: time of defect detection to public announcement, and Stage 3: public notification to the closure of recall activities which comprises reverse logistic processes by the recalling firm and recall monitoring by the regulatory and used the term time to recall by combining the first two stages.…”

“…Interestingly, majority of previous studies were concentrating on the factors influencing customer response in a product-harm crisis (Vassilikopoulou et al, 2009;Magno, 2012). Nevertheless, there is no clear indication on the moderating role of crisis communication on the relationship between crisis management and customer purchase intention post-crisis in previous studies.…”

Recapturing images after a brand crisis through marketing communication in social networks: the Maggi controversy

“…Similarly, purchase behaviour studies using Z test indicates that the majority of people have bought Maggi after its re-launch (Z = 7.2986). Positive media information, more than negative media, has a greater impact, influencing customer's general impressions and their future buying intentions (Vassilikopoulou et al, 2009;Tamuliene and Gabryte, 2014;Srivastava, 2016). As 22% of the respondents did not buy Maggi, 'brand switch over' study is conducted to find out their preference for other brands.…”

Influence of institutional profiles on time to recall

“…Firms may tend to recall faster when severity is high to avoid negative publicity. Most researchers agree that severity of harm crisis can be determined by the extent of injuries and deaths caused by the recalled product (Vassilikopoulou et al, 2009). An incident in a recall crisis involves a case of product failure, whereas an injury involves a case where that failure actually injured the consumer; death is a case where such failure resulted in a fatality.…”