Can Companies Survive a Multi-Brand Crisis? Research on Consumer Scapegoating

Xuan Zhang,Hongzhi Gao,Jill Lei,Hongxia Zhang

doi:10.3390/su12103990

Abstract

Compared with single-brand crises, multi-brand crises have broader and deeper influence. However, there is only a limited amount of research regarding this field, especially for the phenomenon of consumer scapegoating. This research aims to further explore the consumer scapegoating effect and its psychological mechanism in the context of a multi-brand crisis. Through two experimental studies, this research discusses the influence of a multi-brand crisis and also the emergence of a scapegoat brand on two brand categories, the crisis brand category and the competing brand category. Furthermore, the current research also explores the mechanism of the consumer scapegoating effect. Results show that when a multi-brand crisis happens, consumer brand trust in the crisis brand category decreases because of assimilation, and consumer brand trust in the competing brand category increases because of contrast effect. Besides, from the perspective of the crisis brand category, the emergence of a scapegoat brand could be treated by consumers as a signal that the crisis is over, especially for a severe crisis. Results also support that cognitive dissonance mediates the process that the emergence of a scapegoat brand leads to an increase in consumer brand trust in the crisis brand category and a decrease of consumer brand trust in the competing brand category.

Highlights

Marketing researchers have recently started to show interest in multi-brand product-harm crises, though there is still a limited amount of research in this area [1,2,3,4]
Inspired by the research gap, the current research tries to answer the question whether companies involved in a multi-brand crisis can survive and get back consumers’ trust, through addressing the following research questions: (1) In the context of multi-brand crises, how do consumers respond to the signal of a scapegoat brand when rating their trust towards different brand categories? (2) What is the underlying psychological mechanism? we aim to evaluate the different effects of scapegoat brands on different brand categories, as crises can be contagious [16]
We propose that crisis severity would moderate the consumer scapegoating effect, that is, a severe multi-brand crisis goes along with a significant consumer scapegoating effect

Summary

Introduction

Marketing researchers have recently started to show interest in multi-brand product-harm crises, though there is still a limited amount of research in this area [1,2,3,4]. Multi-brand product-harm crises (hereafter called “multi-brand crises”) refer to crises involving multiple brands in an industry. Gao et al [2] proposed a consumer scapegoating effect, their research focused on exploring consumers’ trust towards the scapegoat brand, not towards related or competing brands in the same industry. Gao et al [4] explored the influence of multi-brand crises on consumers’ trust towards brand categories, but their research assumed the emergence of a scapegoat brand in a multi-brand crisis and did not evaluate and compare consumer responses between the existence of a scapegoat brand and nonexistence of a scapegoat brand. Despite its importance, existing academic research overlooked the mechanism of the scapegoating effect

Objectives

Results

Conclusion