Research On The Impact Of Product-harm Crises On Consumers' Emotional Responses And Recovery Expectation

In recent years, product-harm crises had occurred frequently in China, which made the enterprise a big loss, and even caused the enterprise went bankrupt. At the same time, these events also caused great physical harm and psychological harm to consumers, which had serious negative social impacts. But most enterprises had no scientific and reasonable remedial strategies and methods in crisis remedies, and often relied on experience and intuition, which would result in ineffective remedies, such as inadequate remedy or excessive remedy.However, at present, there were few researches of product-harm crisis in domestic study, especially for consumers'recovery expectation after crisis. So these researches could not be very good guidance for enterprise in crisis remedial practice. Therefore, it is necessary to do further research on the product-harm crisis for the enterprise. According to the theory of consumer'recovery expectation, the enterprises could provide more reasonable recovery.In different kinds of products-harm crisis, consumer'recovery expectation and behavioral intentions may exist differences, and crisis recovery measures of the enterprise must also be different. Thus, we must first correctly identify and distinguish different nature of the product-harm crisis. According to the product-harm crisis involving the enterprise of the quantity, this paper think product-harm crisis can be divided into two categories: single (single enterprise) product-harm crisis and cluster (many enterprises) product-harm crisis. And Fang Zheng (2007) thought product-harm crises included indefensible product-harm crisis and defensible product-harm crisis. Based on these two categories of product-harm crises, this study in the perspective of consumers'emotional responses and recovery expectations, respectively discussed the differences of consumers'emotional responses and recovery expectations in these two kinds of product-harm crises, and verified the mediating role of emotional responses.The empirical study showed that consumer's recovery expectation was higher in the single product-harm crisis, while it was lower in cluster product-harm crisis; and higher in the indefensible product-harm crisis, but lower in the defensible product-harm crisis. And consumers'anger emotion & recovery expectation were significantly positive correlated relationship, and anger played a partial intermediary role in the effect of indefensible product-harm crisis and defensible product-harm crisis on recovery expectation. Helpless emotion and recovery expectation were significantly negative orrelated relationship, and helplessness played a partial intermediary role in the effect of single product-harm crisis and cluster product-harm crisis on recovery expectation.