The Research On Customers’ Boycotts Behavior Based On Negative Publicity

In recent years, the consumer boycott occurs frequently around the world, there are alsomany consumer boycotts occurs in China. Professor Ettenson (2005) reported that nonecompany can avoid the boycott. Consumer boycott are always related with some company’snegative publicity, e.g., the event of Carrefour support the Tibetan separatist, ToyotaPrado car,Nippon and Nike’s ads are suspected anti-China.etc. All these negative publicitiesare caused a large number of consumer take part in boycott behavior In China. The behaviorof boycott will cause a lot of negative impact to the enterprise, it may cause decline in marketshare and stock price. he behavior of boycott can also cause Corporate’s brand image bedamaged, the morale of staff in a recession, consumer confidence declined in long term.Friedman (1999) defines a boycott as a collective refusal to purchase goods or servicesfrom a company or distributor whose business or social practices are deemed unfair. Inparticular, we propose that the decision to withhold consumption of a desirable product orservice in the interest of achieving a collective social or economic gain can be conceptualizedas a social dilemma. Social dilemmas are situations in which the interests of individualmembers of a group are at odds with the collective interests of that group (Stefan Hoffmann，Stefan Müller,2009), forcing individuals to choose between maximizing selfish and collectiveinterests. The paper based on social dilemma theory to research the willingness of consumersto participate in the boycott. We studied the consumers’ willingness to participate in theboycott after a negative publicity occurred. In this paper, we studied the influence of brandrelationship quality, consumer pro-social orientation values and perceivedefficacy on the willingness of consumers to boycott. Through empirical research, we foundthat brand relationship quality have direct negative impact on the willingness of consumers toboycott. Moreover, brand relationship quality has Indirect negative impact onthe willingness of consumers to boycott through perceived egregiousness of the act.Consumer pro-social orientation values have no direct impact on the willingness of consumersto boycott. But, it has indirect negative impact on the willingness of consumers to boycottthrough perceived egregiousness of the act. Consumer perceived efficacy hasdirect negative impact on the willingness of consumers to boycott.