Can winning take care of everything? A longitudinal assessment of post-transgression actions on repairing trust in an athlete endorser

Abstract

A celebrity athlete’s transgression damages the public’s trust in that celebrity. However, little is known about whether demonstrating an outstanding performance after the transgression mitigates the negative consequence of that transgression. It also remains unexplored whether engaging in reparation can restore consumer trust and generate forgiveness. Taking a longitudinal approach, we found that post-transgression performance slightly increased competence-based trust but had no impact on increasing integrity-based trust and forgiveness. However, post-transgression reparation efforts enhanced both integrity-based trust and forgiveness over time. Findings also suggest that performance has little impact on generating forgiveness, countering the popular notion that winning takes care of everything.