Restoring Trust and Enhancing Purchase Intention After a Crisis Through a Corporate Social Responsibility Program and a Specific Response Strategy: An Abstract

Abstract

Organizational crises can be extremely damaging for organizational reputation, and legitimacy is something that is widely acknowledged by both practitioners and academics. Organizations confronting a crisis of whatever nature, then, are expected to adequately deal with it in any way possible to avoid incurring the wrath of those who might be directly or indirectly affected by the crisis. While the literature on crisis communication offers an array of evidence-based strategies and approaches any organization embroiled in a crisis could employ, one also wonders whether or not an organization’s precrisis action, specifically corporate social responsibility efforts, in combination with how the organization responds to the crisis could restore customers’ trust in the organization and impact their willingness to engage in an exchange with the organization after the crisis. Additionally, it is worthwhile to investigate how crisis type (product-harm vs. moral-harm crisis) would interact with CSR program type (institutional vs. promotional CSR) and crisis response strategy (rebuild vs. diminish) influencing customer trust and postcrisis purchase intention.