Research On The Influencing Mechanism Of The Country Of Origin’s Tourism Of The Involved Brand In Product-Harm Crisis

In the Internet era,brand or product-harm crisis can be quickly conveyed to consumers through various ways,which may affect consumers’ confidence and perception of the branded products or even related products,making the brand become extremely fragile and sensitive.Product-harm crisis is an occasional and widely publicized incident in which a product is found to be defective or dangerous.Due to the high severety and frequency characteristics of the product-harm crises occurred in recent years,as a conditioned response,consumers began to pay more and more attention to the crisis relevant information of the involved brands in order to avoid crisis.In addition to the direct impact of product-harm crisis events on the involved brand,product-harm crisis may also have a spillover effect other brands or products that are not involved.Among the existing research on product-harm crisis impact on brand,few studies looked into product-harm crisis’ spillover effect on non-involved brands and enterprises.At the same time,the research on the usefulness and accessibility of negative information after the crisis is insufficient,and the influence of consumers’ nationalistic emotional attitude on consumers is also seldom considered.The product-harm crisis perceived by Chinese consumers comes not only from the defects of product or service quality,but also from the decision-making behaviors of foreign enterprises or brands,for example,they may perceive threat or conflict due to enterprise or brand behaviors to the country.Public opinion and negative information related to the crisis that appear on the internet will enhance consumer ethnocentrism,which may lead to consumer’s resistance of the involved products,brands and even the country of origin both emotionly and in action(such as purchasing behavior).The core focus of this paper is to solve the questions “How negative public opinion affect consumers’ willingness to travel to the involved brand’s country of origin after a product-harm crisis? What is the micro mechanism of the crisis’ effect from the cognition and emotion perspective? For tourism destinations,public opinion and travel intention are important variables to guide and reflect consumers’ purchasing decisions after the product-harm crisis,the significance of this study is to post product-harm crisis as the main line of the research,and break through the traditional research train of thought to extend the research on productharm crisis’ impact to the un-involved industries,i.e.tourism industry.The study espectively investigates and discusses the negative spillover effects of the product-harm crisis on the involved brand’s country of origin’s tourism under the influence of the usefulness of internet public opinion,consumers’ subjective knowledge level,the accessibility of negative brand information,consumer ethnocentrism and consumer animosity.According to the literature review on product-harm crisis,little attention has been paid on the social network factors’ effect on product harm crisis,to remedy this shortage of research,the thesis first posed the usefulness of internet public opinion and subjective knowledge level as two antecedent variables based on the theory of planned behavior.The Malaysia airlines MH370 incident was selected as the research object to study the influence of product-harm crisis on consumer brand evaluation and travel intention to the involved brand’s country of origin.According to the empirical study,both the usefulness of internet public opinion and the level of consumers’ subjective knowledge can affect consumers’ evaluation of brands in the product-harm crisis.Meanwhile,consumers’ evaluation of the involved brand will be transferred to the country of origin of the involoved brand and affect consumers’ travel intention to the involved brand’s country of origin,confirming the existence of reverse country of origin effect.Then,based on the first study,with the impact of the usefulness of negative online public opinon on the tourism of the country of origin and the reverse country of origin effect verified,the second study attempts to further explore whether the influence of the accessibility of negative brand information on the formation of tourism intention in the product-harm crisis under the framework of the reverse country of origin effect.Based on the accessibilitydiagnosticity framework and the theory of planned behavior,the second study investigated the South Korean brand Lotte’s “THAD” incident,an incident that also caused perceived risk and hostility,the study explored the mediating mechanism on the relationship between accessibility of negative brand information and consumers’ travel intention to the involved brand’s country of origin.The results show that the accessibility of negative brand information influence consumers’ travel intention to the involved brand’s country of origin through consumer ethnocentrism,brand image,and country of origin’s image.Finally,on the basis of the second research,the thesis explores the boundary conditions that may affect consumers’ choice of tourism.The thesis investigated the moderate effect of consumer animosity between the accessibility of negative brand information and brand image,and the accessibility of negative brand information and consumer ethnocentrism after the South Korean brand Lotte’s “THAD” incident.The moderating effects of gender,age and income on the relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and consumers’ travel intention to the involved brand’s country of origin is also tested.The results of data analysis show that consumer animosity has a moderating effect on the accessibility of negative brand information and brand image,and demographic variables also play different moderating roles on the relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and consumers’ travel intention to the involved brand’s country of origin.The thesis firstly demonstrated that there is a horizontal spillover effect on the tourism of the involved brand’s country of origin in a product-harm crisis due to the role the usefulness of negative public opinion from the cognitive perspective,and also verified the existence of the reverse country of origin effect.Then,from the perspective of consumer ethnocentrism,the thesis examined and confirmed the path mechanism through which the accessibility of negative brand information can affect the consumers’ travel intention to the involved brand’s country of origin via consumer ethnocentrism.Finally,the thesis empirically examined the the moderating mechanism of accessibility of negative brand information to consumers’ travel intention to the involved brand’s country of origin.The research results provided effective suggestions for the repair of the spillover effect of product-harm crisis on the consumers’ travel intention to the involved brand’s country of origin,and countermeasures for the maintenance of tourism brand robustness.