1,721,554 research outputs found
Sustainable brand communications about value-related scandals
Get PDFBrands (un)knowingly highlight inequalities for their benefit through their marketing efforts that may face unpredictable consumer attitudes. This unethical communication is often a cause of brand scandal. Brand communication mistakes, with related stories and customers’ reactions, leave a digital footprint that can last online for many years. Thus, this study primarily focuses on understanding the phenomenon of ethical brand scandals and uncover corporate actions to reduce inequalities. The article applies multiple case study analysis methodology using archival research design. The findings of the study highlight multiple case themes, sustainable corporate strategies, and the importance of consumer’s pre-scandal attitude about the brand. This study captured the digital presence of brand scandal stories, that showcase the mistakes that should be avoided by managers in the future, hopefully inspiring future researchers to explore the triadic relationship between consumers, brands, and channel members
Reducing inequalities with sustainable brand communication: learning lessons from brand scandals
No full textThe study also majorly focuses on investigating ways in which brands communicate their sustainable efforts in case of a brand scandal. Brands have made efforts like legal processes, arbitration, or rituals to recompense for the original breach to re-build its reputation after such an ethical scandal (Sims, 2009). However, these strategies are applied post brand scandal. There is an utmost need to adapt sustainability as a core value in a brand’s value system. Especially for the weaker or unprivileged sections of our society, the situation has worsened with the covid-19 pandemic, leading to increased income inequalities and reduced availability of basic facilities and amenities (SDG’s Goal 10). There are multiple reasons that a brand may not consider sustainability as an essential goal in their brand value system. It may not wish to be portrayed as a brand for the weaker section of the society, or a brand that may include the less privileged as part of its brand but not empower them, or it may prefer to stay silent about sharing its good deeds of reducing the inequalities. People belonging to the unprivileged class face issues for attaining necessities. Thus, there is a need to lay down ways of communicating such supportive efforts by the brands. These will make the needful aware as well able to take the benefits of their reach and offering. Sustainable contributions by brands shall act as a catalyst for those with no means of uplifting themselves. Accordingly, our research focuses on analyzing sustainable strategies to be adopted by brands that do not practice sustainability in their regime. . Our preparatory study already suggests six research steps, four on the consumers’ side, and two on the marketers’ side. An overview of initial literature gaps, literature review and selected research methodology are discussed. Moreover, this paper highlights future research themes and methos
Forgiveness in the Face of Brand Scandals: How Opinions About Corporate Actions and Pre-scandal Trust and Experience Play a Role
No full textBrand scandals are widespread adverse events. Many companies rely on the belief that consumers will forgive them, but brand forgiveness unfortunately is not guaranteed, and the effectiveness of company actions is only sometimes clear. This study aims to investigate the mechanisms behind brand forgiveness and strategies to prevent a crisis and manage brand scandals. Focusing on the well-known Nestle Maggi brand scandal, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the impact of consumers’ opinions of corporate actions on their attitudes toward the scandal and, ultimately, on their willingness to forgive the brand. Driven by gaps in the literature, this research hypothesized the roles of brand experience and brand trust before the scandal as mediating variables. These variables influence consumers’ opinions about corporate actions and their subsequent attitude toward the scandal, affecting the forgiveness of the brand. The main findings reveal that, while corporate actions are crucial, they are not sufficient on their own to shape consumer attitudes towards the scandal. Instead, brand experience and trust established before the scandal play a significant mediating role in this relationship. Therefore, our insights suggest that consumer forgiveness cannot be assumed; it is significantly influenced by their pre-existing brand experience and trust. These findings provide valuable guidance for brand managers, offering insights into effective scandal management and suggesting context-specific managerial implications
The role of retailers during brand scandals: insights from a case study
Get PDFThe role of retailers in influencing consumer attitude during a brand scandal is quite complex as retailers are in direct contact with both marketers and consumers. The purpose of this exploratory research is to propose a theoretical model to capture the influences retailers exercise on consumers during brand scandals. A qualitative approach has been adopted in this study. The study employs the grounded theory approach on the data collected by conducting in-depth interviews with 25 retailers. Four contextual conditions and six behavioral antecedents of the retailer’s role in the context of the brand scandal were identified. Then, this study finds that companies tend to follow two broad approaches during a brand scandal to address retailers’ queries and apprehensions. On these bases, the study proposes a six-pronged typology to better understand retailers’ role in shaping consumers’ brand perception. Existing literature has not paid adequate attention to this aspect of retailers’ role in influencing consumer choices during brand scandal. To the best of our knowledge, there is no prior research which investigates the role and influence of retailers in shaping consumer attitude during brand scandals. It is important to underline that this research advocates retailers' significant role during a performance-based brand scandal. Specifically, we explored a health-related defective scandal of a well-known food brand. In addition, this study focuses on traditional grocery retailers, that already have special relationships with their consumers. Based on retailer perspectives, our contribution is also updating the discussion of branding theory in case of scandals. The identified variables and constructs may be used for empirical investigation on the role of retailers in shaping consumer attitudes towards the scandalized brand
A study on the impact of corporate actions on consumer attitudes in the case of a brand scandal: mediating role of pre-scandal brand experience and brand trust
No full textBrand scandals are complex situations in which products are defective, unsafe, or even dangerous (Vassilikopoulou et al., 2009). This research aims to discuss if corporate actions can influence consumers’ attitudes about the brand scandal (ABS), which may further affect brand forgiveness (BF) and attitude about the product category (APC). The study reveals that corporate actions significantly and favourably influence consumer attitudes toward brand scandals. Our results confirm that corporate actions of the brand marketer Nestle have influenced consumers’ attitude during Maggi’s brand scandal in India. So, we may confirm that corporate actions during a brand scandal play a critical role in possibly mitigating scandal effects (Yuan et al., 2020). We specifically tested the corporate actions as antecedents because we assumed the same could play a fundamental role in scandal management. We further argue that consumers’ pre-scandal brand experience and brand trust could mediate between corporate actions and attitude about the brand scandal in the case of a brand scandal.
The research involves the application of survey methodology and adapted measures from research articles published previously. A three-item scale was adapted to measure attitude toward product category (APC) (Siomkos et al., 2010), BF (Xie & Peng, 2009), and pre-scandal BE (Stokburger-Sauer et al., 2012), while four item scale was adapted to study BT (Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2002). Corporate action (CA) was measured using a five-item scale (Kiambi & Shafer, 2016), and ABS with an eight-item scale (Banerjee, 2018; Coyle & Thorson, 2001). The questionnaire statements measure. To maintain homogeneity throughout the questionnaire, a seven point Likert scale was used (1= strongly disagree to 7= strongly agree).
The context of this study is the Maggi brand scandal, and each respondent was aware of it. Conversations about the scandal prevail until recent times (India Today, 2021). This research applied structural equation modeling (SEM) to empirically verify the theoretical model using AMOS 24. This study involved a two-step process comprising a measurement model (CFA–Confirmatory factor analysis) followed by a structural model (Anderson & Gerbing, 1988). We circulated the questionnaire within India amongst the consumers of Maggi using a purposive sampling technique. Out of 753 responses received, 717 were qualified for the study (95% response rate). Out of the total respondents, males were 55.2%, and females were 44.8%. The demographic profiles of the respondents comprising different age groups (25-34= 38.1%, 15-24= 36.1%, 35-44= 17%, 45 and above age group= 8.8%).
The findings of this study reveal the non-linearity of consumer’s response. Consumers’ attitude about a brand scandal are formed based on not only corporate actions but mediated by their pre- scandal brand experience and brand trust together. Thus, marketers must strengthen consumer’s pre-scandal brand experience and brand trust to attain a favourable attitude about the brand scandal. Marketers must showcase corporate actions to consumers portraying it cares about them. The study confirms that a favourable attitude about the brand scandal leads to brand forgiveness and a positive attitude about the product category. So, it is very critical to maintain a positive attitude about the scandal through corporate actions. This study brings some important implications for practitioners: marketers should strengthen the consumer’s product associations because their attitude about the brand scandal influences both the attitude about the brand’s forgiveness and their attitude about the product category being offered, irrespective of the brand
Consumer emotions and perceptions about value-related brand scandals: insights from a qualitative study
No full textBrand scandals impact consumers perceptions and their brand attitude, and if mismanaged they led to brand crisis with severe consequences for the brand. However, some scandals are difficult to predict or prevent. Recently, a growing number of value-related scandals are on the news every day and involve many consumers in digital conversations, that could influence their emotional relationship with the brand. So, it is important to better understand their emotional reactions to the scandals, and their expectations on corporate actions (scandal management),
that could have an influence on their behavioural outcomes, such as their willingness to forgive and repurchase intention. Our study aims at an in-depth analysis of sentiment and emotions of consumers of four well renowned luxury brand scandals, adopting a grounded theory approach and using the cases’ stimuli to evaluate their reactions and expectations of related corporate actions. Data analysis is conducted with text mining through Emoji characters “from emotions to emojis” for creating more appealing and easy to read visual research reporting. Preliminary
findings revealed some negative feelings and attitudes towards the scandals, and a consumer dilemma on corporate actions, which is questioning scandal management’s credibility and effectiveness. Through this qualitative research, valuable insights are offered to companies to improve their strategies and better satisfy the consumers’ expectations
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Corporate actions mediating the consumer’s brand trust and attitude in case of a brand scandal
Get PDFConsumers are eager to observe the actions taken by their trusted brand to rebuild consumers’ confidence in case of a brand scandal. They perceive it as a sign of the extent to which a brand cares about its consumers. During a brand scandal, the role of corporate actions in influencing consumers' attitudes towards the brand scandal and their forgiveness may become important. This study explores the influence a brand has on its consumers during brand scandals through structural equation modeling
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