Does One Bad Apple Spoil the Whole Bunch? A Social Identity Explanation of Consumers’ Reactions to Employee Morality

Abstract

This project examines the effect of an employee’s transgression on consumers’ judgments of company morality and reveals the influence of social identity. The moral implications of the employee’s action, for the company and for the customer, influenced reactions in the form of purchase intentions and judgments of the company’s morality. However, in contrast to the predictions of theories of moral judgment in the psychology literature, the company’s perceived responsibility for the employee’s moral or immoral action does not affect consumers’ moral judgments. Consistent with social identity theory, commitment to the company based on identification moderates the effect of information about an immoral employee action. In addition, a representative employee with a strong current association to the company affects weakly identified consumers’ moral judgments more than does a relatively low-level employee.