A Study On Crisis Response Strategies And Corporate Reputation On Consumer Behavioral Intentions

With the complex and constantly changing marketing environments and increasingly various product categories,more and more corporate crises are being presented to the public.The frequent crises not only pose a serious threat to corporate economy and brand assets,but also bring huge physical and psychological harm to consumers.Most domestic and foreign scholars focus on corporate response strategies and the impact of factors such as crisis types and crisis severity on corporates from corporates' perspective,but overlook the impact of crises on consumer behavioral intentions after crises.The direct impact of crises is on consumers.Therefore,it's of great importance to corporates' effective crisis communication and management to study the impact of crisis response strategies and corporate reputation on consumer behavioral intentions from the perspective of the consumer attribution of responsibility.This paper uses the method that combines theoretical study and empirical analysis.In the summary of relevant studies at home and abroad,this study introduces the attribution of responsibility(controllability,locus of control)as the mediating variable and constructs the theoretical model that how crisis response strategies and corporate reputation influence consumer behavioral intentions(negative word-of-mouth,purchase intention)based on Situational Crisis Communication Theory and Attribution Theory.This paper sets situations that describe different crisis response strategies and corporate reputation and forms four groups of experiments with the experimental method.On the basis of the questionnaire data collected from 248 college students from Huazhong Agricultural University,the correlation analysis and regression analysis are done with SPSS19.0.The results are as follows:(1)The more positive crisis response strategies are,then the less consumer negative word-of mouth is and the stronger consumer purchase intention is;(2)The better the corporate reputation is,then the less consumer negative word-of mouth is and the stronger consumer purchase intention is;(3)Attribution of responsibility(controllability,locus of control)plays the mediation role in the relationship between crisis response strategies and consumer negative word-of-mouth,and they also plays the mediation role in the relationship between crisis response strategies and consumer purchase intention;(4)Attribution of responsibility(controllability,locus of control)plays the mediation role in the relationship between the corporate reputation and consumer negative word-of-mouth,and they also plays the mediation role in the relationship between the corporate reputation and consumer purchase intention.This paper is innovative in the research perspective.It studies the impact of crisis response strategies on consumer behavioral intentions.In addition,it introduces an important factor of the corporate reputation into the research model and explores how corporate reputation influences consumer behavioral intentions through the consumer attribution of responsibility.This study not only makes a supplement to the relevant research in crisis communication field,but also has great guiding significance to corporates' effective handling of crises and the long-term and stable development of corporates.