How The Product-harm Crisis Affect Consumers’ Behavior: From The Perspective Of Emotion And Motivation

Product-harm crisis is the occasional and widely publicity event about a productdefective or harmful to consumers. Recent years, all kinds of Product-harm crisis occurfrequently, bring great distress to the daily lives of consumers, and also reduce sales ofenterprise products. Most literature focused on the type of crisis and the remedial response,but how product-harm crisis influence the consumers‘behaviors has not been studiedenough, and the consumers‘response behavior still need further discussion. Based on thereview of large amount literature and case of product-harm crisis, the present thesis foundout that the crisis in China was not only related to few companies, but increasing casesrevealed that many companies in a same industry was involved, which academic calledclusters. So it is necessary to investigate the difference between the few companiesinvolved crisis and the cluster crisis. A variety of sources of information increase thedifficulty for consumers finding the crisis cause (Laufer al.,2009). In the ambiguouscircumstances, consumers‘reaction mechanism is not only a rational process, andsometimes will result in―irrational behaviors‖. This thesis focused on the attribution ofproduct-harm crisis, consumers‘negative emotions, and motivations, threaten evaluation,and response behaviors. Based on the collection and review of former literature, this thesisbuilt concept models, and proposed some hypothesis. The whole thesis contains threestudies.In study1, the author compared consumers‘emotions between the circumstances ofproduct-harm crisis and service failure, and confirmed anger and helplessness was themajor influence emotions. Considering the circumstance of product-harm crisis, thisarticle constructed a model to investigate the relationship among negative emotions,motivation, and coping behaviors based on theoretical analysis. Then this paper employedstructure equation model to analysis the data from questionnaire survey. Anger was foundto positively affect the seeking retaliation behaviors (negative WOM and switching) andseeking solution behaviors (company complaint and third-party complaint), but the role ofhelplessness was opposite to anger. The medication role of motivations (retaliation desireand recovery expectation) has also been proved. Retaliation desire can mediate relationships between negative emotions and seeking retaliation behaviors, while recoveryexpectation can mediate the relationships between negative emotions and seeking solutionbehaviors. The management implications for companies‘responses have also beendiscussed in the conclusion.In study2, the author focused on the difference of cluster level (high vs. low) onconsumer recovery expectation and the immanent mechanism. This study employed a fieldexperiment to investigate the effect of cluster attribution on recovery expectation, andtested the mediation role of negative emotions (anger and helplessness), and the moderatorrole of brand reputation. The results indicated that cluster attribution negatively affectrecovery expectation, with the more companies involved in the product-harm crisis, thelow recovery expectation being motivated. Brand reputation moderated the relationshipbetween the cluster and recovery expectation. When the brand reputation was low, thenegative relation between cluster and recovery expectation was more significant.In study3, the effect of crisis attribution on purchasing intention was investigated. Infact, product-harm crisis not always certainly decrease sales, so some core factors shouldbe full discussed. Based on review of literature and cases about product-harm crisis, thisclassified three attributions (harmfulness, cluster, and duration). From the prospective ofthreaten evaluation of protection motivation theory, this study interpreted the negativerelations between product-harm crisis and purchasing behavior through the mediation roleof severity perception and vulnerability perception, and the moderator role of uncertaintyavoidance. Results of questionnaire survey after―crash chicken‖crisis demonstrated themeditation effect of severity perception and vulnerability perception. Furthermore, theeffect of severity (vulnerability) perception on purchasing intention trust is moderated byuncertainty avoidance, and such an effect is stronger if the uncertainty avoidance is higher.