Masters Degrees (Business Management)

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Browsing Masters Degrees (Business Management) by browse.metadata.advisor "Ehlers, Lene"

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    Crisis communication, ethical beliefs, and consumer responses in the case of a product-harm crisis
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2022-04) Botes, Janice; Ehlers, Lene; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. Dept. of Business Management.
    ENGLISH SUMMARY : Well-publicised product-harm crises, such as the 2018 listeriosis scandal, have proved to South African fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) firms that product-harm crises could have devastating consequences for a firm’s reputation as well as its financial stability. Owing to the highly publicised nature of a product-harm crisis, a firm’s crisis communication efforts in responding to the crisis may significantly affect its efforts to survive reputational damage. Hence, it is important for FMCG firms to understand how the South African public may respond in terms of perceived severity, attribution of blame, feelings of anger, word of mouth and purchase intention. The role of ethical beliefs, and more importantly, how to respond appropriately to the public in times of crisis is also important. The Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) is often used as a framework in crisis situations to assist firms in identifying the correct response strategy to use given their crisis responsibility. The purpose of this research is to contribute to existing knowledge on the use of SCCT, by investigating the influence of SCCT crisis clusters, crisis communication response strategies and ethical beliefs on attribution of blame, perceived severity, feelings of anger, word of mouth (WOM) and purchase intention in the case of a South African product-harm crisis. This was done by means of a 2 (SCCT crisis cluster) x 4 (SCCT response strategy) x 2 (ethical beliefs), between subject experimental design involving 392 respondents. A three-way ANOVA was employed testing the main effects as well as the three-way and two-way interaction effects. Possible mediating and moderating effects of the response variables and ethical beliefs in the relationship between the SCCT crisis communication response strategies (per crisis cluster) and purchase intention were also tested by means of a moderated serial multiple mediation model. Useful strategic insights were derived from the results. This study that will assist FMCG firms to better predict consumer cognitive, affective, and behavioural responses, the role consumers ethical beliefs will play, and which SCCT response strategy would be the most effective given the different crisis clusters. The results of this study confirmed that perceived severity, attribution of blame, feelings of anger, WOM, and purchase intent are all prominent and interconnected, negative consumer responses. It was evident that a few of the SCCT response strategies did somewhat positively influence the consumer-response variables and the relationships between them, however not to the extent that it would completely reverse the reputational damage caused. Ethical beliefs moderated a few relationships between the SCCT crisis clusters and strategies and consumer-response variables, however, future research is needed to further investigate these in the South African context.