Product-harm Crisis Coping And Consumers' Attribution Of Responsibility Effects On Brand Equity

Product-harm crisis occurs frequently,so,researching for the prevention of products injury and product-harm crisis coping is particularly important.Product-harm crisis coping will impact brand equity.Some companies take appropriate measures after the crisis,they not only control the product-harm very well,but also enhance the brand image in the minds of consumers.After receiving the information about crisis,consumers try to attribute to the crisis.On the one hand,crisis coping of enterprises will affect consumers' attribution of the responsibility,on the other hand,different attribution of crisis responsibilities will also result in different effects on brand equity.it is apparent that consumers' attribution will make influence on product-harm crisis coping and brand equity.In addition,different involvmeent result in different views and crisis attribution.Therefore,the degree of involvement is also an important variable in the study.This study regard consumers' attributed as the intervening variable between product-harm crisis coping and brand equity.In this study,product-harm crisis coping is divided into three dimensions,namely:initiative,responsiveness and complete information.This study will do some theoretical and empirical analysis to test the rationality of this dimension division.This study use Lisrel8.7 to do structural equation analysis for the study model and use SPSS 19.0 to test the the moderating effect of involvement between harm-crisis coping and consumers' attribution,to arrive at the impact mechanism between variables.Also it verifies the three dimensions of product-harm crisis coping are reasonable.In this study,discussing about harm-crisis coping effects on brand equity has good theoretical and practical significance.Firstly,in previous studies,scholars focus on the specific approach about harm-crisis.In this study,the dividsion of product-harm crisis coping:initiative,responsiveness and complete information,to some extent,is a theoretical innovation.And these three dimensions can be provided as a reference about harm-crisis coping.Secondly,the impact mechanism of product-harm crisis coping,consumers' attribution,the degree of consumer involvement,and brand equity,will not only enrich the theory about product-harm crisis,while making corporates understand the influence among product-harm crisis coping,consumers' attribution,the degree of consumer involvement,and brand equity so that corporates,whether in a crisis or not,will get some manage inspiration about harm-crisis coping.