Why Say Sorry? Influencing Consumer Perceptions Post Organizational Crises

Abstract

Organizational crises can have devastating consequences to reputation, an important, intangible asset that can threaten an organization's long term viability. Therefore, choosing post-crisis communication responses mitigating negative consumer, public and stakeholders’ perceptions are critical to managing corporate reputation. This exploratory, Australian based research tests crisis responses across the continuum of ‘defensive’ and ‘accommodative’ alternatives. Findings indicate that highly accommodating responses lead to significantly higher impressions of the organization and trust levels indicating less reputational damage. Conversely, the highly defensive strategy of denial indicated reputational damage had occurred. Surprisingly, a ‘neutral’ response strategy (no comment), a moderate ‘accommodative’ strategy (apology), and a moderate ‘defensive’ strategy (excuse) did not result in significantly different consumer impressions of, or trust in, the organization. Results indicate Australian perceptions of highly accommodative and highly defensive strategies are consistent with results found internationally. However, findings challenge existing literature and assumptions regarding affects of different crisis response strategies, suggesting it may be feasible to make no comment, rather than defend or apologize, if desired providing new insight into crisis responses strategy options available to managers.

Crises through the consumer lens: the role of trust, blame and risk

“…Meanwhile, many studies agree that risk is closely connected to trust (Mayer et al , 1995; Grabner-Kräuter and Kaluscha, 2003). In a crisis context, consumers’ overall perceptions towards a company have an impact on trust in the company as well as its products (De Blasio and Veale, 2009). The proper handling of a crisis situation has a favourable impact on consumers’ trust perceptions on an organization (Doney and Cannon, 1997).…”

The effects of firm action messages on the information processing and risk perception of customers

“…In selecting and releasing messages for crisis communication, the respective effects of each kind of message on consumer perceptions must be significantly understood (De Blasio and Veale, 2009). The managers must try their best to select the types of messages that can attenuate the negative effects on the organization and then use them to better communicate with their consumers (De Blasio and Veale, 2009). In general, firms typically release announcements about their actions or activities to the media during a crisis to communicate with their consumers (Rindova et al, 2006).…”

“…Such firm action messages provide information about their defective products and assert their efforts and other actions in response to the critical situation (Zavyalova et al, 2012). Crisis management researchers have discovered that implicated firms could effectively reduce the negative effects of the crisis on their consumers by accurately providing them with fully considered information (De Blasio and Veale, 2009). Accordingly, these researchers considered that the choice of crisis communication response is extremely crucial (Coombs and Holladay, 1996;Lee, 2005).…”

Brand Crisis Response Strategies: A Typologies Continuum

“…The term "no comment" and "no response" are used interchangeably to reflect no reaction and stay silent towards accusation and brand crisis. Using this pathway, firms would not show any correlation and implement any communication response to tackle problems (Bradford & Garrett, 1995;De Blasio & Veale, 2009;Vafeiadis et al, 2019). There was a large number of firms engaging with this method having received accusations (83/127 cases) (Lamin & Zaheer, 2012); however, silence in some cases caused crisis wire-spread and crisis spill over to other parts of the business (Do et al, 2019).…”