Research Of Consumers' Purchase Intent In Defensible Product Harm Crises

In this abstract, the author will briefly introduce this dissertation from the following aspects: research background, research contents, research methodology, research results and research conclusions.The first aspect is about research background. In the market, this research found that consumers kept on buying some products and refused to buy others after defensible product harm crises, which made the author think of one problem: what made consumers' purchase intent display such a big difference after defensible product harm crises? However, from past research findings, we couldn't find a suitable answer for this problem.The second aspect is about research contents. Research contents of this research have been divided into two parts. The first part is about product harm crisis, and the second is about defensible product harm crisis. Concerning product harm crisis, there are 3 research contents: definition of product harm crisis, classification of product harm crisis and classification of product harm crisis responses. Concerning defensible product harm crisis, this paper mainly analyzes how defensible product harm crisis and its related factors impact consumers' perceived danger and purchase intent. These factors are: response to product harm crisis, media reports, consumers' difference.These 3 research contents are listed as below: Empirical research 1: How consumers' difference impacts their perceived danger and purchase intent in defensible product harm crises? According to exploratory research, we found that some physiological factors, such as aging and sex difference, might influence consumers' purchase intent.Empirical research 2: How media's reports impact consumers' perceived danger and purchase intent? No scholar has carried out empirical research to confirm which kind of media reports would impact consumers' perceived danger and purchase intent. Answering this question would be helpful for marketers to understand the origins of perceived danger and consequently take appropriate actions.Empirical research 3: How company's and others' crisis responses impact consumers' perceived danger and purchase intent in defensible product harm crises? This is the key content of this dissertation, because marketers care most about what kind of responses should be taken to maintain their market share in defensible product harm crises.The third aspect is about research methodology. For the study of the first part, we mainly analyze secondary data. And for the study of the second part, experimentation is utilized to confirm cause-effect relationship in hypotheses. In empirical researches, Factorial Design and Scenario Simulating are both chosen. The reason choosing Scenario Simulating is being lack of laboratory experimentation facility. To choose Factorial Design is for that we need to analyze influence of different independent variables evaluated at various levels.The fourth aspect is about research results. In the first part, the author firstly defines the classification criteria of product harm crisis: whether or not products' defects or harm violates product safety regulations. Based on this criteria, we divide product harm crises into 2 kinds: Defensible product harm crisis and Indefensible product harm crisis. On the other hand, we classify crisis responses by subjects: company's responses and others' responses. Furthermore, company's responses could be classified into 4 kinds: taking no measures, simple denial or attacking accuser, explicit explanation, rectificative action; others' responses might be classified into 3 kinds: experts' clarification, government's clarification and industrial organization's clarification.In the second part of this research, we get some research results from 3 empirical researches:Empirical research 1 : From exploratory research in Physiology and Psychology, 4 hypotheses are formulated: H₁: Consumers' age difference might impact consumers' perceived danger in defensible product harm crises. H₂ : Consumers' age difference might impact consumers' purchase intent in defensible product harm crisis. H₃: Consumers' sexual difference might impact consumers' perceived danger in defensible product harm crisis. H₄: Consumers' sexual difference might impact consumers' purchase intent in defensible product harm crisis. And data analysis findings found that H₁ and H₂ are partly confirmed and H₃ and H₄ are not confirmed. To be specific, only old consumers perceived more danger than other consumers, and their purchase intent dropped more seriously than other consumers; sexual difference won't impact consumers' perceived danger and purchase intent.Empirical research 2: Based on research findings in Psychology, such as attribution theory, the author forms H₅ and H₆: consumers' perceived danger would be negatively influenced by media reports that company's product was under suspicion, and so would be consumers' purchase intent. Besides that, according to theory of Conformity, we formulate H₇ and H₈: consumers' perceived danger would be negatively influenced by media reports that people took measures to guard against product's potential danger, and so would be consumers' purchase intent. Data analysis findings confirm the 4 hypotheses.Empirical research 3: In the first place, according to research findings in Physiology and Psychology and findings about CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), the author formulates 12 hypotheses: H₉: Taking no measures would result in higher perceived danger compared to simple denial or attacking accuser, explicit explanation and rectificative action; H₁₀: Taking no measures would result in lower purchase intent compared to simple denial or attacking accuser, explicit explanation and rectificative action; H₁₁: Simple denial or attacking accuser would lead to higher perceived danger compared to explicit explanation. H₁₂ : Simple denial or attacking accuser would lead to lower purchase intent compared to explicit explanation. H₁₃: Simple denial or attacking accuser would lead to higher perceived danger compared to rectificative action. H₁₄: Simple denial or attacking accuser would lead to lower purchase intent compared to rectificative action. H₁₅: Others' clarification alleviates consumers' perceived danger better than company responses. H₁₆ : Others' clarification maintains consumers' purchase intent better than company responses. H₁₇ : Experts' clarification alleviates consumers' perceived danger better than industrial organization's clarification. H₁₈ : Experts' clarification maintains consumers' purchase intent better than industrial organization's clarification. H₁₉ : Government's clarification alleviates consumers' perceived danger better than industrial organization's clarification. H₂₀: Government's clarification maintains consumers' purchase intent better than industrial organization's clarification. And data analysis findings confirm the 8 of these 12 hypotheses: H₉,H₁₀,H₁₁,H₁₂,H₁₅,H₁₆,H₁₉ and H₂₀. However, other 4 hypotheses, H₁₃,H₁₄,H₁₇ and H₁₈, are not confirmed.The fifth aspect is about research conclusions. Firstly, based on empirical research 1, we get a meaningful conclusion: older consumers perceive more dangers and their purchase intent decreased more in defensible product harm crisis than other consumers, and sexual difference won't impact consumers' perceived danger and purchase intent. Secondly, based on empirical research 2, we find that 2 kinds of media reports would significantly negatively influence consumers' perceived danger and purchase intent. These 2 kinds of media reports are: media reports that company's product was under suspicion and media reports that people took measures to guard against product's potential danger. Finally, based on empirical research 3, we get 3 conclusions: Others' clarification is more effective than company's clarification; the best company's response is explicit explanation; ideal others' responses are government's responses.