Consumer Attribution And Its Effectiveness Mechanism In The Context Of Food Safety Crisis

We focus on the role consumer attribution played in the context of food safety crisis. Numerous of researchers have discussed the importance of justice theory when they were investigating related issues about repairing relationship, but have found the difficulty to explain many inconsistent results. However, from the perspective of attribution theory, it becomes easier to resolve the contradictions. More importantly, when experiencing a food safety crisis, consumers are eager to attribute the crisis to a variety of causes since the food safety crisis is viewed as risky and influencing. Therefore, after reviewing related literature, we tried to understand consumer attribution and its effectiveness mechanism in this special condition.In the first study, we attempted to find out what impact consumers’attributions in the context of food safety crisis. A scenario-based questionnaire design was utilized to test our hypotheses. The results of analyzing data from212undergraduate and graduate students showed an insignificant main effect of recovery strategies the firm used on consumers’attributions and a significant moderating effect of consumer involvement on the relationship between the strategies and consumers’attributions. Specifically, victims (highly involved consumers) would more likely to deem the cause of the crisis internal to the firm but unstable after receiving the apology from the firm than compensation, while bystanders (consumers with low involvement) just tempt to believe the crisis as a stable event if the firm apologized. After understanding the mode of consumer attribution, we made a further step to investigate how consumers’attributions influence consumers’satisfaction and future purchase intentions.The second study investigated the effectiveness mechanism of consumer attribution and discussed the important role of trustworthiness. We used202consumers’data and the results supported most of our hypotheses that controllability attributions would impact satisfaction negatively through the ability (partially mediation) and integrity (complete mediation) dimensions of trustworthiness and influence future purchase intentions negatively through the same two attributions (complete mediation), while stability attributions negatively influence satisfaction and future purchase intentions through the mediating effect of perceived integrity (complete mediation).Overall, by two closely connected studies, we thoroughly explored the role of consumer attribution in the food safety crisis, which contributed to the developing of theory and had great value to the practice. In addition, we realized and emphasized the importance of consumer attributes when talking about the relationship between the firm and consumer, although consumers were treated as passive observers from the traditional relationship repair perspective. We discussed the difference between attributions of victims and bystanders, and by which extending the application of attribution theory in the relationship repair research. In the end, advices for future study were provided.