This study explores the interactive relationship between apology, as a crisisresponse strategy used in the current Toyota recall crisis, and product involvement in influencing the restoration of the organization's reputation Downloaded from and customers' future purchase intentions. The authors measured the impact of the interaction between participants' perception of an apology and their product-involvement levels using a 2 (perception of apology: high sincerity vs. low sincerity) Â 2 (product involvement: high vs. low) experiment design. The results showed that an apology was an effective strategy for repairing the organization's reputation for those participants who were highly involved and perceived the strategy as highly sincere, but it did not increase their purchase intentions.

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PurposeThis paper aims to investigate how the US financial services organizations (FSOs) provided marketing information and the way they strategically used various appeals through their advertising before and during the current financial crisis.Design/methodology/approachThis takes the form of a content analysis examining a total of 2,480 financial services ads (FSA) in print magazines within two periods – the two years before the crisis (2005 to 2006) and the two years during the crisis (2007 to 2008).FindingsThis study showed three significant findings: because of the economic struggle, there was a significant decline across the two periods in the total number of yearly FSA; the economic crisis led to a significant increase in the use of informational message strategies across all FSOs; and financial value and atmospherics appeals were predominant after the crisis. However, each FSO used appeals in a different way.Research limitations/implicationsThis study focused on only print media. A future research project aimed at other traditional media such as television and new media such as the internet or weblogs could provide additional analysis of financial advertising strategies.Practical implicationsThe findings of this study suggest that FSOs may rely much more heavily on informational than on transformational approaches during an economic crisis. The findings may provide further valuable implications for non‐profit institutions and international marketers.Originality/valueThis study contributes in several ways to understanding of the strategic communicative reactions of FSOs during the crisis.

This study investigated whether the 2008 summer Olympic Games improved the country image of China among foreign consumers. It examined the extent to which the changed country image contributed to its product image. A quasi-experimental research design was used, with surveys taken two months before and two months after the event. The results showed that hosting the Olympics significantly improved the country image of China but did not affect the image of its products in a positive way.

Retirement savings and investments have been two of the most important financial service vehicles for American consumers' futures in recent years. With this backdrop, policymakers and consumer educators need retirement financial service providers to play the crucial role of helping consumers make economic decisions with regard to retirement plans and ultimately build retirement assets. This research of how retirement financial services advertising attempted to inform, communicate and persuade investors during the past four years (2006–2009) includes two crucial events in the US retirement marketplace—the Pension Protection Act of 2006 and the 2007/2008 US financial crisis. A content analysis examined the type of information, the communication strategies and the judgmental heuristic cues presented in a total of 1,430 retirement financial service advertisements in six national US business‐finance magazines from 2006 to 2009.