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Communicating with consumers during a product recall

Gerrits, D.G. (2015) Communicating with consumers during a product recall.

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Abstract:Organizational crisis can threaten an organizational reputation or even its existence. For organizations it is therefore important to act appropriately during a crisis. During a product recall an organization asks its customers to return a product, because the product could inflict damage. However, a product recall can also be a crisis response. The severity of a product recall is not always the same. It is therefore interesting to investigate whether consumers perceive information about a product recall differently, when the severity of the product recall differs. The accidental cluster of the SCCT (Coombs, 2007) is a commonly used clusters of crisis responsibility during a product recall. Furthermore, organizations can adjust the spokesperson of the message. They can choose to use a human spokesperson, or they can choose an unknown organizational spokesperson. Finally, the frame of the message can be adjusted in a crisis situation. Either the organization uses a rational frame, or an emotional frame. Altogether this research uses a 2 (Severity: minor vs. major) x 2 (Spokesperson: human (CEO) vs. organizational) x 2 (Framing: rational vs. emotional) design to investigate whether these factors affect the emotions and behavioral intentions of the consumers during a product recall. Furthermore the trustworthiness of the organization was measured during this research. The results show that crisis severity influences all the dependent measures. No significant effects were found for the type of spokesperson, and the frame of the message. Finally, an interaction effect was found between crisis severity and the frame of the message, on the anger of consumers.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:05 communication studies
Programme:Communication Studies MSc (60713)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/68056
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