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- Title
When a Company Does Not Respond to Negative Publicity: Cognitive Elaboration vs. Negative Affect Perspective.
- Authors
Menon, Geeta; Jewell, Robert D.; Unnava, H. Rao
- Abstract
Company response to negative publicity is a critical element affecting consumer attitude towards the company and the brand. This study explores the mediational processes that impact changes in the attitudes of consumers when exposed to four different kinds of company responses to negative publicity. Two of the responses manipulated in the experiment deal with strong and weak arguments while the other two are "no comment" and "no comment due to litigation" conditions. The latter two responses fall into the category of unavailability of information from a consumer's perspective. In past research, unavailability of information has been shown to be mediated by two different kinds of processes. Commodity theory of Brock (1992) states that effects of the unavailability of information is mediated by cognitive elaboration while reactance theory (Brehm 1966) argues that negative affect that consumers experience results in attitude change. The results of an experiment designed to test these competing processes in the context of consumer response to a company's response to negative publicity reveals the occurrence of both processes. Strong argument responses caused the least damage to attitude towards a company and brand faced with negative publicity. The no comment and the no comment due to possible litigation response conditions showed equal damage. Finally, the weak argument condition did not differ from the no comment and the no comment due to litigation condition revealing that when companies issue statements for damage control it is necessary to carefully craft a strong response.
- Subjects
ISSUES management (Public relations); CORPORATE image; DAMAGE control (Public relations); CRISIS management research; ADVERSE publicity; PUBLIC relations
- Publication
Advances in Consumer Research, 1999, Vol 26, Issue 1, p325
- ISSN
0098-9258
- Publication type
Article