Study On The Effect Of Good Corporate Reputation In Different Product Harm Crisis Scenarios

In recent years, the product harm crisis outbreaks frequnently. In real economic life, the well-known brand or the good reputation corporation is more vulnerable to the crisis. However, in similar product harm crisis, the different corporations face different market reaction. Some products still won numerous consumers’preferences, and some products suffer heavy market losses or quit from the market. Therefore, we have some questions:whether the different reputation is the reason of different market reactions; in the product harm crisis, does a good reputation protect the corporates or increase the penalty of crisis? In crisis management, many researchers considered the reputation as a result variable of crisis impacting, discussed the negative impact of the crisis on the reputation. The impact analysis of the original corporate reputation is relatively limited and the views of different scholars are contradictory. The purpose of this study is to clear the role of good reputation in the product harm crisis.Through studying the existing literatures, we find the cause of the contradictory conclusions is these studies ignore the different of each product harm crisis scenarios. Based on Laufer’s research and the analysis of the real cases in 2004-2013, this paper divide product harm crisis scenario into ambiguous product harm crisis and the clear responsibility product harm crisis; further, subdivided into product safety ambiguous crisis; product unsafe but the causes ambiguous crisis; failure crisis of core competence; failure crisis of non-core competence and crisis caused by bad moral. Combined with the two phases of changing consumer attitudes after the outbreak of crisis, this paper consists of two parts, the role performance and mechanism of good corporate in the crisis information stage, the relationship of corporate reputation and crisis response strategy in the corporate initial response stage. The study sample is college students, using the scenario experiment by designing different crisis scenarios and statistical methods to test the proposed theoretical assumptions, such as analysis of variance.In the information crisis stage, in order to explain the role of corporate reputation more clearly, we divide the performance into three categories, account effect, protective effect and damaging effect. The first two is an positive effect of the good reputation, the latter is a negative effect. Based on resistance process model, attribution theory and the expectancy-disconfirmation theory, this paper presentes the mediating variables are reliability of conclusion, responsibility attribution, intention attribution, stability attribution and expectancy disconfirmation; and in various crisis scenarios, the role perfromenc and mechanism of good reputation is different. Finally, the conclusions are as follows:(1) Whether in the ambiguous crisis scenario, or in the clear responsibility crisis scenario, the crisis will have a negative impact to the corporate, consumer attitudes decreased significantly after crisis. In the ambiguous crisis, the failure crisis of non-core competencies and the failure crisis of core competencies, the original good corporate reputation have played an active account effects, consumer attitudes of post-crisis were significantly higher than the general reputation corporate; in the failure crisis of bad moral, the account effect disappeared, consumer attitudes of post-crisis were not different; in the ambiguous crisis, the ambiguity of cause analysis reinforces the active role of good corporate reputation.(2)In the different crisis scenarios, there are the different mechanism of original good reputation, the higher ambiguity degree of reasons in the crisis scenario, the original good corporate reputation can play more protective role. In product safety ambiguous crisis, through reliability of conclusion, stability attribution and responsibility attribution, the good reputation play a protective role, the consumer attitude changing is less than the general reputation corporation. In the crisis of product unsafe but the reasons ambiguous, when given a variety of reason analysis, the original good reputation play a protective role through the attribution of responsibility and stability; when the analysis is not given, stability attribution and inconsistent expectations play the mediating effects. In the clear corporate wrongs crisis, when the crisis comes from the failure of core competencies and bad moral, inconsistent expectations play the mediating effect. In the failure scenario of non-core competencies, stable attribution and inconsistent expectation are the mediationg variables, ultimately the performance of good corporate reputation is damaging effects.In the initial response stages of ambiguous product harm crisis scenario, companies can adopt care strategies or non-existenc strategies, and the good reputation regulates the choice of coping strategies; in clear corporate wrongs crisis, fault feature regulates the impact of the positive effect of good reputation to repair strategies. In product safety ambiguous crisis, for corporates with good reputation, non-existenc strategies and care strategies can play an active role; but for the corporate with intermediate reputation, the only choice is care strategies. Non-existenc strategies, not only fail to improve consumer attitudes, but also lead to the secondary damage. In the product harm crisis of clear corporate wrongs, no matter how corporate reputation, companies only can take the repair strategy. In this crisis, fault feature mediates the validity of coping strategies. Only in the failure crisis of competency, the good corporate reputation enhances the positive effects of repair strategies; while in the failure crisis of bad moral, the original corporate reputation has not good positive impact to repair the crisis.This study enriches and developes the knowledges of the corporate reputation influence in crisis scenario. Now the companies more increasingly focus on the reputation building and Product Harm Crisis occures more frequently. Facing the different crisis scenarios in different stages of crisis evolution, the corporates not only focus on the positive role of reputation, but also pay more attention to avoid the negative impact. And this paper provided some useful management implications of crisis management.