The Effects of Negative Publicity on Consumer’s Evaluation toward Service Brand Extension

• Main Authors: Miao-Chen Wang, 王妙真
• Other Authors: 作者未提供
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/94833863699982489851

碩士 === 銘傳大學 === 觀光事業學系碩士在職專班 === 99 === Although businesses try to avoid any potential harm on their reputation, the prevalence of corporate’s negative publicity still cause substantial reputation damage and financial loss. In past decades, major efforts were directed toward the understanding of customer’s responses to negative publicity and business’s reactions, but several important research avenues remained unexplored. One of them is the potential spillover effect of negative publicity. In recent years, brand extension has become an important business strategy for pursing company growth, and this lead to an interesting but understudied question: Will the professional relevance of corporate negative publicity (ProRel) lead to negative brand extension evaluation? Based on literature in brand extension and negative publicity, the current research argues that the ProRel will lead to lower brand extension evaluation. The primary psychological mechanism behind the ProRel-Evaluation relationship is customer’s perceived betrayal. Moreover, the author also proposes that customer relationship quality and brand extension distance moderate those abovementioned relationships. Three laboratory-based experiments tested proposed hypotheses. Experiment 1 examined the relationship between ProRel, perceived betrayal, and extension evaluation. The findings suggest that ProRel caused a negative effect on extension evaluation and perceived betrayal is an important mediator. Experiment 2 demonstrates the moderating role of customer relationship quality. The author argues that high relationship quality will magnify the negative effect of ProRel on customer’s perceived betrayal (a “love becomes hate” effect). Evidences from Experiment 2 support the hypothesis. For high-quality customers, ProRel caused stronger effects on perceived betrayal. Experiment 3 examined the other moderator: brand extension distance. Empirical findings from Experiment 3 indicate that extension distance mitigate the negative relationship between perceived betrayal and extension evaluation. The current research also provides theoretical and managerial contributions, and potential future research directions.