Effect Of Brand Crisis On Consumer Brand Attitude And Purchase Intention Based On Ambivalent Attitude Perspective

In recent years, as the complex and volatile of the market environment and therapid development of information technology, brand crises outbreak more and morefrequently. Such negative crises information constantly stimulate the numb nerve ofconsumer, and may lead to great losses of brand reputation and enterprise revenue,the negative impact could be devastating. While crisis is an ordinary state in China,brand crises seems to be inevitable to the company. Thus crisis management ability isessential for the survival and development to the company. Previous research hasshown that accurately analysis of process of consumer information processing andpredict of consumer attitudes and behavior is absolutely necessary to company'sselection of crisis response strategy. Attitudes have traditionally been conceptualizedas unidimensional and bipolar, different from the traditional perspective, this studyproposes to analyze consumer brand attitudes and behavioral intention in ambivalenceperspective, attempt to shed light on consumer's hidden changes in attitudes moredetailedly and accurately.Based on review of related theory of brand crises, crisis situational factors,consumer attitudes and consumer ambivalent attitudes, employing experimentalmethod, the present research firstly focuses on impact of crisis attribution onconsumer ambivalence, exploring the influence of brand crisis in different attributionon consumer ambivalent attitudes which moderated by brand commitment. Secondly,the study proposes and tests the impact of crisis history on consumer ambivalentattitudes, the ambivalent level before receiving the past crises history information playa moderate role in this relationship. Again, the study verifies the role of consumerambivalence on the relationship between consumer attitudes and behavior intentionthrough empirical research.The main conclusions of the research are as followings.(1) Crisis attribution hasan impact on consumer ambivalent attitude moderated by brand commitment. Whenthe attribution of current crisis was external, the negative attitude, positive attitude and ambivalent attitude of consumers high in commitment do not have a significantchange; while when the attribution of current crisis is internal, the negative attitude ofthe high commitment consumers is significantly higher, with a significant reduction inpositive attitudes, and ambivalent attitudes are significantly increased. There aresignificant changes in negative attitudes, positive attitudes and ambivalent attitudes ofconsumers low in commitment. However crisis attribution does not have an effect onattitude of low commitment consumer. Low commitment consumers' ambivalentattitudes are affected by brand attitude direction before the crisis.(2) The negative andpositive attitudes of consumers high in ambivalence before receive the past crisisinformation do not have a significant change when they receive crisis historyinformation, While their ambivalent attitudes are decreased. Crisis history makes asignificant influence on the ambivalent attitudes of consumers low in ambivalencewho have positive attitude direction before the crisis.(3) Consumer brand ambivalentattitude moderate the relationship of consumer attitude and purchase intention. Theresult showed that compared with consumers with low levels of ambivalent attitudes,high ambivalence lead to uncertainty of consumer behavior intention, and that wouldreduce the predictability of brand attitude on purchase intention.According to the conclusions, the study proposes a few of correspondingmanagerial implications. Firstly, companies should re-interpretation consumer attitudefrom ambivalent perspective in order to make a deep understanding of the changes ofconsumer attitudes and behavior during the crisis. Then it is essential to have anexplicit analysis of crisis situation, so that strategies could be employed to consumerswith different levels of ambivalence in different attribution situation. In addition,when past negative crises information are exposed, company should clearlyregcognize the crisis situation, choose the effective response strategy, make sure thatthe most effecient symbolic resources could be used to the recovery of the crisis.