Brand Crisis Management Based On Psychological Contract

Brand is the psychological contract and the relationship knot between enterprise and consumer, which is considered to be the key factor for the enterprises to survive and success in the era of knowledge economy. However, with the level of competition of the market economy increasing and the internal and external environments of enterprise changing , the psychological contract between enterprises and consumers maybe turn out to be variance or broken up in the brand created, maintenance and development stage, thus leading to a brand crisis. The development of information technology has accelerated the spread of brand crisis, which has become normal from case originally in the domestic. If the brand crisis is improperly dealt with, it will enable the enterprises to be suffered a great loss, or even endanger the survival of the brand and enterprises. In such circumstances, how to understand, deal with and convert the brand crisis is the vital issue the operators need to pay attention to.The thesis redefined the band and brand crisis from the view of psychological contract basing on reviewing the previous studies, classified and analyzed the causes of the 40 cases of brand crisis from 2004 to 2007. We found that the transactional psychological contract factors are the main causes of the brand crisis, accounting for about 57.5%. Considering the single factor, product quality, customer relations and services, operation and management are the top three of all the factors that cause the brand crisis, respectively accounting for about 22.5%, 20%, 15%. Then the thesis points out the mechanism of brand crisis basing on psychological contract. At last the thesis gives six major principles of the brand crisis management and the strategies of the prevention management, response management and recovery management of brand crisis.