The Influence Of Scapegoat Strategy On Negative E-Word Of Mouth:Rationality Perception As The Mediator

The ancients said that good and bad things depend on each other.With the rapid development of modern Internet,it has brought broad development opportunities to enterprises,but also brought some uncertain risks and pressure.In recent years,many well-known enterprises at home and abroad frequently break out brand crisis.Once enterprises handle it improperly,it will further strengthen the negative effect of crisis events.Studies have shown that negative word of mouth reduces the earnings from the stocks,and that negative word of mouth tends to have a stronger impact than positive word of mouth.Therefore,enterprises regard word-of-mouth as an important marketing element.In order to maintain positive word of mouth and to maintain the reputation of the company,after a crisis enterprises will use a variety of crisis communication strategies,among which scapegoat strategy is frequently used by domestic and foreign enterprises.Previous studies have focused on exploring the effectiveness of scapegoat strategies,and there still exists some debate.Some scholars believe that compared with other crisis coping strategies,scapegoat strategy is the most effective,while some other scholars believe that scapegoat strategy is essentially transferring responsibility and is an ineffective practice.Based on this,some researchers have discussed the mechanism of scapegoat from the perspective of attribution theory and perceived moral level,but the results only support part of the explanation.Therefore,the main research problem in this paper is to clarify the mechanism of scapegoat strategy by using other explanatory paths.Based on S-O-R theory and crisis situation communication theory,this paper verifies the influence of scapegoat strategy on negative electronic word-of-mouth behavior through experimental research,that is,whether the company that chooses to use scapegoat strategy is in an advantageous or disadvantageous position in the industry,will cause the difference in consumers’ word-of-mouth evaluation.This paper tries to explain the mechanism between scapegoat strategy and consumers’ negative e-word-of-mouth from the perspective of rationality perception.In addition,this paper applys bias as the boundary condition,employs situational experiment method to verify the scapegoat strategy’s main effect on negative e-word-of-mouth behavior,and uses questionnaire sampling method to verify the mediating and moderating effects of rationality perception and bias.After analyzing this paper,the following results are obtained:1.The scapegoat strategy used by enterprises in the dominant position of the industry will enhance the spread of negative electronic word-of-mouth.2.Compared with enterprises in a dominant position in the industry,enterprises in a disadvantageous position in the industry can obtain stronger consumers’ perception of practical rationality,moral rationality and cognitive rationality.3.Perceived practical rationality,perceived moral rationality and perceived cognitive rationality mediate the relationship between scapegoat strategy and negative e-word of mouth.4.Scapegoat strategy and bias have a significant interaction effect on the perception of practical rationality and the perception of moral rationality.The results of this paper further expand the research on scapegoat strategy,rationality perception,negative electronic word of mouth,bias and other variables,and further explain the mechanism of scapegoat strategy.According to the results of this study,the following suggestions can be put forward :1.In crisis response,organizations should reasonably and scientifically use their own crisis response communication methods,so as to reduce the spread of negative electronic word-of-mouth from consumers to organizations.2.When the organization adopts crisis response strategies,it should not unethically manipulate consumers’ prejudice towards those responsible for the crisis,so that they seem to be responsible for a certain crisis.Such practice violates business ethics and will harm the interests of some parties.