Effects Of Firm Response On Firm - Consumer Relationship Quality In The Product Harm Crisis

At present, product harm crisis occurs frequently in kinds of frims, but firms always fail to do the right response. It is quite essential for the firm to take the right action as soon as the product harm crisis happens. Based on Relations activities– Relational benefits - Relationship quality model, supplemented by the attribution theory of consumers, the paper built a new model under the context of product harm crisis: firm response– relational benefits/attribution (from the consumers'perspective)– relationship quality (between the firm and consumers), so as to give some advices to the firm to help them maintain a nice relationship with consumers after product crisis.The paper includes six sections: The first part is introduction, the background of this study is briefly decribed starting from a general analysis of the current situation and existed problems, and then the issue, purpose and the research method are raised. The second part is theoretical study. Literature review of product harm crisis, firm response, relational benefits and relationship quality are given firstly. The various variables and their relations involved in this study are reviewd systematically, which are the theoretical fundation of the study. The third part is to form the research frameworks and generate the hypotheses on the basis of literature review. The fourth part is the empirical study. Datas on consumers'perception of relaional benefits and attribution are collected through situational experiments. The fifth part is about statistical analysis. The sixth part focuses on the marketing advices, creative points and disadvantages of the paper, and future research directions.The main findings of the paper are as follows:Firm response affects the relationship quality between firm and consumers. The more actively the firm performs after the product harm crisis, the better the relationship quality is, which means a higher consumer satisifaciton, trust and stronger affection.Each dimension of relational benefits mediates the relationship between firm response and firm– consumer relationship quality. The more actively the firm performs after the product harm crisis, the more confidence benefits, more social benefits and special benefits consumers get, leading to a higher satisfaction, trust and stronger affection. Stability dimesion of the attribution mediates the relationship between firm response and firm– consumer relationship quality, while locus does a little help and controllability shows no mediation effects. The more actively firm performs after the product harm crisis, the less stability of the crisis consumers feel, which leads to a higher satisfaction, trust and stronger affection.