Earticle

초록

영어

At the corporate level, brands are increasing efforts to shape their ethical image given the rise of ethical consumerism in the past few decades. Naturally, brands serve as vehicles to develop meaningful relationships with consumers which might explain why brands have the propensity to influence consumer actions. In view of this, if firms want to survive in the competitive market place, then the importance of developing and maintaining strong customer-brand relationships must be at the core of brand management decisions. In many interpersonal relationships, the likelihood of mishaps and conflicts cannot be ruled out. One study, thus, suggests that, in romantic relationships, being hurt or wronged as a result of betrayal and disagreements is inevitable (Rye & Pargament, 2002). Firms and their brands are no different from this sort of relationship, given that, some consumers develop a great deal of affinity for some brands. However, brand-related crises or transgressions could act as recipes for damaging the image of the brand in question. After a brand transgression, response from consumers may take different forms. The consumer’s response or the relationship with the brand may be affected by whether the consumer forgives the brand or evangelizes about the brand. Research shows that, in the event of a service failure, the degree of service failure will also impact consumers’ coping response (Tsarenko & Tojib, 2012). In their study they also prove that, following a transgression of a firm, consumers’ decision to change or switch service provider was attenuated by forgiveness. Ysseldyk & Wohl, 2012, also discover that, forgiveness acts as an investment to a relationship, such that, in the aftermath of a firm’s transgression, forgiveness acted as a preservation for commitment. Due to forgiveness, Consumers are willing to continue purchasing the firms’ products even after a transgression (Tsarenko & Tojib, 2015). These streams of research demonstrate the relevance of forgiveness after service failures. However, studies have only concentrated on one type of coping response – forgiveness. In this study we examine another coping response – brand evangelism in addition to brand forgiveness in a bid to understand how these affect the brand relationship quality. “Brand evangelism is another emotion-focused coping strategy that is similar to word-ofmouth. This strategy refers to the proselytizing behavior of the consumer in trying to convert others to become brand users” (Schnebelen & Bruhn, 2018). The authors also define brand forgiveness as another emotion-focused coping strategy that acts as tempting justice with mercy. The primary focus of this article is to examine these mechanisms- brand forgiveness and brand evangelism in explaining the relationship between a brand’s unethical act and the relationship quality. Extant research has examined consumer responses to brand transgressions. However, most of these studies use scenario-based experiments which limits the generalization of research findings. In this study we examine a real-world service failure - Facebook’s breach of data which appeared in the Irish times, Wednesday the 14th of April, 2018. Recent news in the media suggests that younger people are using popular social media such as Facebook more often which means that understanding how consumers respond to a transgression by an oftenused SNS like Facebook will provide an important addition of knowledge in the literature. Thus, we take particular interest in understanding the role of brand forgiveness and brand evangelism in the relationship between the firm’s severity of ethicality and the brand relationship quality. A theoretical framework with hypothesized relationships is developed and tested in order to answer the research questions. We propose the following based on previous studies: Adopting a survey method of data collection, 226 students from Silla Universitywere randomly selected to constitute the sample. The questionnaire consisted of a caption of the news item on Facebooks’ breach of data. Subjects were asked to read the news item and thereafter complete other questions regarding their opinions on the news item. Resorting to the procedure suggested by Hayes (2018, model 4) a test of significance for both mediators to calculate the indirect effects for 5,000 resamples was done. Generally, the results of the mediation imply that, forgiveness and brand evangelism act as important mechanisms in understanding consumer-brand relationships after brands act unacceptably. We advance the knowledge in consumer behavior by showing how consumers offer to deal with their relationships with brands through brand evangelism and forgiveness. This provides relevant information to managers to seek strategies in order to obtain forgiveness from consumers in case the unfortunate happens. Not only must they seek to obtain forgiveness but also seek ways to ensure brand evangelism of their brands. These acts as buffers for the brands in case a transgression happens.

키워드

저자

• Kyung-Min Kim [ Professor Silla Univ. ]
• Benjamin Nobi [ Ph. D. Student Silla Univ. ]

참고문헌

발행기관

간행물

표지보기 관심저널 등록

• 간행물명

  한국마케팅관리학회 학술대회

• 간기

  부정기

• 수록기간

  2018~2025

• 십진분류

  KDC 325 DDC 330