How to repair customer trust of high-risk products after negative publicity

Abstract

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the efficiency of various customer trust repair efforts for high-risk products that are closely related with the safety and health of customers after negative publicity. Many corporations are suffering from the crisis of customer trust after negative publicity in China in recent years. Design/methodology/approach – Taking the Chinese dairy industry as the research context, this research adopted quantitative survey methodology using self-administered questionnaires to collect data of 204 dairy consumers in mainland China. Hypotheses tests were conducted using structural equation modeling. Findings – The results reveal that, for the high-risk products, affective repair has positive effect on benevolence-based trust and integrity-based trust, and informational repair has strong positive relationship with competence-based trust and integrity-based trust. Surprisingly, there are no significant relationship between functional repair and three factors of trust. In addition, all three trust factors positively affect repurchase intention. Originality/value – This paper is among the first to examine and confirm the efficiency of various customer trust repair efforts for high-risk products after negative publicity. The findings of this paper provide the high-risk product companies with guidance about how to repair customer trust after negative publicity.