When do product crises hurt business? A meta-analytic investigation of negative publicity on consumer responses

Abstract

This meta-analysis synthesizes 30 years of empirical work examining the impact of product crises on consumer evaluations. Prior research suggests that a product crisis will negatively affect consumer responses to that product. Extending this stream of research, we show that the magnitude of negative information effects is dependent on characteristics of the crisis, the product, and target consumers. Specifically, the deleterious effects of product crises are more pronounced when threat severity is high, the product failure is performance-related, consumer health is at issue, the product is directly involved in the incident, and the crisis occurs in a high power distance or high uncertainty avoidance cultures. We discuss theoretical contributions and practical implications of these findings for both marketing scholars and brand managers.