Research on the Influence of Conflicting Brand Crisis Information on Consumers’ Brand Attitude

Jiuqun He

doi:10.4236/ajibm.2016.65056

Abstract

In recent ten years, brand crises occur frequently. Consumers are often faced with the situation that they don’t even know whether the involved brand is innocent or not. This paper aims to explore how conflicting information influences the information selection and brand attitude change of consumers in contradictory situation—defensible brand crisis. We carried out an experiment using a two-level single factor (brand commitment: high vs. low) between-subjects design. The results show that conflicting information has a significant negative impact on consumers’ brand attitude. And brand commitment plays as a moderating role between the relationship of conflicting information and brand attitude. Implications of the results are discussed.

Highlights

In recent ten years, brand crises occur frequently, e.g., Sanlu milk powder incident; Nongfu Spring standard controversy
Taking Nongfu Spring standard controversial event for example, at the beginning, there was a news report claiming that the product executive standard of Nongfu Spring drinking water was provincial standard in some factories, worse still, the drinking water provincial standard was more looser than running water standard
A negative news about Nike (Nike sports shoes were detected to contain hormone NPE) was firstly presented to participants, and participants would read conflicting information consisted of outlines of three positive information and three negative information related to the prior news

Summary

Introduction

Brand crises occur frequently, e.g., Sanlu milk powder incident; Nongfu Spring standard controversy. Consumers are often faced with the situation that they don’t even know whether the involved brand is innocent or not. Because for a brand crisis event, consumers can receive information from various sources, and sometimes these opinions are clash with each other, even contradictory. Taking Nongfu Spring standard controversial event for example, at the beginning, there was a news report claiming that the product executive standard of Nongfu Spring drinking water was provincial standard in some factories, worse still, the drinking water provincial standard was more looser than running water standard. Information from lots of media and third-party organizations was everywhere.

Objectives

Methods

Conclusion