Predicting consumers' reactions to product failure: Do responsibility judgments follow from consumers' causal explanations?

Abstract

Recent research in psychology suggests that people's causal attributions for an occurrence may not reflect the entirety of their beliefs about how the event transpired but rather which subset of this information has “explanatory relevance” given the context of the causal question. The present research examines the implications of this proposition for causal judgments about product failure and manufacturer responsibility. An experiment is presented which shows that consumers' attributions for product failure — to manufacturer-related vs. consumer-related factors — may vary with the “causal background” or reference case against which the occurrence is considered. These findings are discussed in light of previous research in marketing which suggests responsibility judgments should be related to the locus of consumers' attributions.