Study On The Repair Mechanism Of Corporate Crisis In The Context Of Product-harm Crisis

In recent years, various types of product-harm crisis in the domestic not only caused great physical and psychological harm for consumers, but also brought serious negative impact for enterprises involved. In the context of crisis, domestic and foreign scholars have conducted in-depth research, such as the response from the enterprises, crisis characteristics, crisis history, corporate reputation, brand asset and responsibility attribution, in order to investigate the influence of crisis to the enterprises. Other scholars have also investigated the influence of crisis event to the customers such as cognition, emotion and motivation from the perspective of consumers.Existing researches have widely investigated the influences of the product harm crisis, however, there are still some issues worthy of our thinking. First, the main goal that enterprises deal with product-harm crisis is to take measures to quell consumer’negative emotions, repair the damaged relations between consumers and enterprises, and minimize the negative effect on brand assets. Therefore, the enterprises’crisis recovery should be a longer-term continuing efforts to process. However, previous studies mostly focused on the short-term response of enterprises after happened crisis and failed to explore the enterprises’efforts of sustained restoration; Second, the existing literatures have not yet made a comprehensive explanation about how consumers’negative emotions and perceptions gradually transfer to previous state, that is, forgiveness; following enterprise’s restoration efforts; Third, after the crisis events, it is lack about the effects of extra-role recovery measures of companies in addition to their intra-role ones.In view of this, this dissertation puts forward the concept of crisis repair mechanism of enterprise on the basis of predecessors’ researches and constructs the research models. Four empirical studies explored the effects of recovery measures on consumers’ perception and behavior tendency and obtained the following conclusions:First, in the process of network interactivity, the interactive utility completely mediates the effect of network interactivity on consumers’ repurchase willingness; The degree of consumers’negative IWOM can moderate the effect of network interactivity on interactive utility, that is, compared with severe negative IWOM situation, the effect is more strong between network interactivity and interactive utility in the context of mild negative IWOM.Second, in the process of the network interactivity among enterprise and consumers after the crisis, content interactivity has significant positive influence on consumers’forgiveness; Interpersonal interactivity has a positive effect on consumer forgiveness as well; At the same time, the uncertainty avoidance of consumer performs a moderating role between the network interactivity and consumer forgiveness and interactive quality in the network interactivity has a moderating role between both variables.Third, the voluntary recall of enterprise has a significant influence on consumer forgiveness after the crisis. Inferred sincerity play a partial mediating role between voluntary recall and consumer-company identification; And consumer-company identification fully mediates the effect of voluntary recall on forgiveness. The inferred sincerity partially mediates the effect of the voluntary recall on consumer-company identification; And consumer-company identification fully mediates the effect of the voluntary recall on consumer forgiveness.Fourth, the extra-role recovery measures of the enterprise can also produce auxiliary effect to restore their relationship; The social responsibility level of enterprise has positive effect on consumer forgiveness; Customer identification mediates the effect of CSR level, negative publicity on forgiveness; The social responsibility fit can moderate the relationship between CSR level and forgiveness. The main innovations of this dissertation are as follows:First, theoretical innovation, the relevant theories of psychology and marketing are introduced to explain the repair mechanism of enterprises. The models of consumer’s reaction and intention are constructed in the context of product-harm crisis. The study findings provide theoretical basis to guide recovery strategy for enterprises.Second, content innovation, first of all, on the basis of predecessors’researches, we compared the enterprises’ crisis response and the restoration of negative image and put forward the concept of repair mechanism of product-harm crisis, and clarify its connotation and denotation; Secondly, according to the scope of the repair strategy, we probed into the intra-role and extra-role restoration strategies and emotional, functional and informational restoration strategy and theirs mechanism; Finally, this paper discusses the repair strategies and examines the paths and rationale of various measures.Finally, this paper points out the future research direction:(1) the future study, can further examine crisis enterprise’s other restoration strategy measures impact on consumer psychology and behavior intention;(2) can be further combined with the research of psychology crisis means to study consumer after the psychological mechanisms of forgiveness;(3) trust to violate consumer trust reconstruction after mediation and adjust variables for further investigation;(4) tracking crisis enterprise restoration strategy implementation process of dynamic effect from the objective data to examine the effects of repairing consumer-brand relationship, will make the research conclusion with more external validity.