The role of consumer ethical beliefs in product‐harm crises

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the consumer reaction during a product-harm crisis by examining the interdependencies that exist among their ethical beliefs as consumers, their attributions of blame, their feelings of anger and finally their purchase intentions towards the affected company. To test the five research hypotheses, a questionnaire containing a hypothetical crisis scenario of a fictitious company was distributed to 277 consumers. Respondents were asked to read the scenario and answer questions regarding their attribution of responsibility to the company, their feelings of anger and their purchase intentions. In order to investigate consumers' ethical beliefs, a Consumer Ethics Scale was also included in the questionnaire. Structural equation modelling revealed a significant, positive correlation between attributions of blame, anger and ethical beliefs. Moreover, anger negatively affects purchase intentions, whereas the attribution of blame was not found to be significantly connected to purchase intentions. In spite of the rational connection between ethics and crisis, there is lack of research correlating these two concepts. Based on this gap in the literature, the current research attempts to connect ethical beliefs with consumer reactions and emotions during product-harm crises.

The Ethical Judgment and Moral Reaction to the Product-Harm Crisis: Theoretical Model and Empirical Research

“…Organizational crises have ethical features [12] because the crises will finally bring harm to consumers [22][23][24][25]. The reasons for product-harm crises include the technology failure, the deliberate efforts, the distorted values, and deception [26][27][28][29][30][31].…”

“…The product-harm crisis is an enterprises' basic ethical issue, which has an important ethical scene characteristic [12]. Grappi et al thought that the harm to consumers can be regarded as a kind of ethical transgressions, which may damage the interests, freedom, and dignity of consumers [13].…”

Mitigating Product Harm Crises and Making Markets Sustainable: How does National Culture Matter?

“…Past scholars emphasized the need of implementing appropriate and effective response strategies for the ethical and unethical consumers in times of product harm crises [19]. The field of crisis communication focuses on the emotions consumers feel during crises [23,24].…”

“…The variables of consumers' perceptions of the affected company, and consumers' perceptions of the affected brand [48], and purchase intention [19] were measured with a 7 point Likert scales ranging from 1 = "strongly disagree" to 7 = "strongly agree". Consumer based brand equity was measured as a measure of consumer beliefs [5,49,50]; including brand attitude (favorable-unfavorable), brand trust (not at all trustworthy-very trustworthy), perceived quality of the brand (low-high), perceived quality of products of the brand (low-high), and brand desirability (not at all desirable-very desirable) using five items in a 7-point semantic scale.…”

“…Product harm crises can be regarded as ethical situations not only because crises can inflict harm on individuals [17], but also due to the involvement of a responsible agent [18]. A product harm crisis causes consumer negative emotions toward the affected company [19], and these emotions are the key drivers of moral behavior [20]. Therefore, the current study tries to scrutinize this matter through a new empirical angle, companies' moral reputation.…”