Dialectical mind can be sweet toward crisis‐associated products/brands

Abstract

Consumers' thinking style (e.g., dialectical thinking), which is fundamental to cognition, has been paid inadequate attention in the consumer literature. This research explores the impact of dialectical thinking on Chinese consumer responses toward crisis-associated products/brands. Findings in three experimental studies indicate that, in comparison to those primed with nondialectical thinking, consumers primed with dialectical thinking report higher levels of purchase intention and trust for a crisis-associated product/brand. This is the case not just for products with Chinese cultural background, but also for products with western cultural background. Consumers' perceived severity of crises moderates the impact of dialectical thinking, with a stronger impact in a highly severe crisis situation than in a less severe one. A survey study indicates a similar pattern. These findings are important in suggesting ways of encouraging Chinese consumers to be insistent on quality standard in order to better protect their consumer rights, and moreover, for multinational corporations on how best to respond and formulate strategies of handling productharm crises in the Chinese market.

The role of subnational cultural value on animosity: the China-South Korea THAAD crisis

“…Second, future studies can draw on the literature on country-of-origin (c.f., Shi et al ., 2018) or “brand origin” to account for the fact that many brands, both local and foreign, manufacture their wares in countries other than which they are based using components from other countries (Papadopoulos et al , 2018).…”

“…However, if product evaluation is defined as a mixture of cognitive and emotional factors, other results may emerge. Further, a few studies suggest that some of the animosity dimensions positively affect quality evaluation (Ahn, 2014(Ahn, , 2015Ahn et al, 2014;Eren, 2013;Heinberg, 2017;Lee, 2018 Second, future studies can draw on the literature on country-of-origin (c.f., Shi, Wang, & Liu, 2018) or "brand origin" to account for the fact that many brands, both local and foreign, manufacture their wares in countries other than which they are based using components from other countries (Papadopoulos et al, 2018).…”

Do products branded with handwritten scripts suffer more amid product-harm crises?

“…Product-harm crises are discrete, well-publicized events wherein a product is found to be defective or dangerous (Dawar and Pillutla, 2000; Zhang and Lim, 2021). A typical product-harm crisis often involves two important features of a product or brand that lead to negative outcomes: a fault that is harmful or dangerous to the consumers’ health and well-being and a discovery that runs counter to one or more key propositions of the brand (Shi et al , 2018; Hong et al , 2021). A product-harm crisis is one of the most common crises that companies face (Davidson and Worrell, 1992) and has impact on a corporation’s reputational assets (Lee and Quan, 2020).…”

“…To avoid this, country-of-origin stereotypes were evaluated with: “Hand soaps produced abroad are of higher quality;” “Hand soaps produced abroad are technologically superior;” and “Hand soaps produced abroad have a good reputation” (1 = totally disagree; 7 = totally agree; α = 0.80; Maheswaran, 1994). Lastly, participants were asked to guess the purpose of the experiment and to answer questions for the manipulation check (Schroll et al , 2018; Shi et al , 2018; Puzakova et al , 2013): “Is the typeface on the packaging a handwritten script or a machine typeface?” (1 = machine, 7 = handwritten). “The above information is relatively negative for Brand A.” (1 = totally disagree, 7 = totally agree).…”