THE EFFECT OF PRODUCT-HARM CRISIS SITUATIONS ON FIRMS' SPOKESPERSON STRATEGIES: EVIDENCES FROM THE EMERGING ECONOMIES OF CHINA MARKET

摘要

Product-harm crises are discrete, well-publicized occurrences wherein products are found to be defective or dangerous. Firms facing product-harm crises need effective communications to inspire renewed or continued public faith and support. The marketing literature has focused on "what" to communicate in a crisis situation, and has not had much to say on the spokesperson (Gorn, Jiang and Johar 2008). In this paper, we will focus on the spokesperson strategy. If CEO, or the similar level of top executives response to the crisis on behalf of the firm, we call it a top-executive spokesperson strategy, otherwise it is called a non-top-executive spokesperson strategy. Based on crisis situation theory (Coombs 2007), we examine the effect of two key crisis situation factors, crisis type, and crisis severity on firm's spokesperson strategy. We also add brand origin into the study, and test hypotheses with data from media coverage of 127 product-harm crises in China.