The Study Of Consumer Purchase Choice Under The Frequent Occurrence Of Product Quality Incidents

In recent years, the frequent occurrence of the product quality incidents not onlycause a certain influence to consumer psychology, but also to the corporate reputationand the relationship between enterprises and consumers. Previous studies care moreabout that, during an accidental product harm crisis, how these factors includingconsumers’ personal characteristics, enterprise crisis coping style and public opinionimpact consumer purchase choice. This paper will study that, when the product qualityincidents occur frequently, how the consumers take advantage of their own uniqueresources to make purchase choice.Based on the review of domestic and foreign research results, this paper proposes theresearch model and hypothesis. The research model lists as follows:(1)The consumerresources, including economic resources, time resources and cognitive resources, isindependent variable;(2) The consumer perceived risk, including physical risk, capitalrisk and psychological risk, is intermediary variable;(3)The possibility that theconsumers continue to buy the critical products or turn to buy other surrogate productsis dependent variable.This paper selects a representative company in the dairy products industry----Mengniu as the studying object. This company suffered a series of product qualityincidents these years. We investigate and study the consumers’ viewpoints on theseincidents by issuing questionnaires.The research result verifies the research model andhypothesis. It confirms that: Under the frequent occurrence of the product qualityincidents,(1) Consumer economy resources have a positive effect on perceived risk.The consumers from different income brackets will have a stronger perceived risk thanusual;(2) Consumer time and cognitive resources have a significant positive effect onperceived risk. For consumers, more time and cognitive resources they have, morestronger the perceived risk will be;(3)The economic, time and cognitive resources havea significant negative impact on the purchase possibility. For consumers, moreeconomic, time and cognitive resources they have, more possibly they will not continueto buy the critical products and turn to buy other surrogate products;(4) Forconsumers,more stronger perceived risk they have, more possibly they will not continueto buy the critical products and turn to buy other surrogate products.Finally this paper put forwards some management implications:(1)The enterpriseshould pay attention to the various hidden perils;(2) The enterprise should take part inmore social welfare activities and perform the social responsibility;(3) The enterprisemust strengthen the understanding of their consumers and potential consumers, andadopt different marketing strategies for different consumers;(4) The enterprise shouldtry their best to avoid product quality incident. Once the product quality incidenthappens, the enterprise should take a positive respond in the first time.