How can ethical brands respond to service failures? Understanding how moral identity motivates compensation preferences through self-consistency and social approval

Suzanne van Gils and Kate E. Horton

Journal of Business Research, 2019, vol. 95, issue C, 455-463

Abstract: We examine how the two dimensions of moral identity - internalization and symbolization - impact on customers' relationships with ethical brands, as well as their satisfaction with different types of (private versus public) compensation and apologies following service failures. We propose and find in a field study of customers of a green social enterprise (N = 159) and in an online scenario study (N = 214) that high moral identity internalization is associated with higher satisfaction with private apologies, but not with public apologies and compensation, while high moral identity symbolization is associated with higher satisfaction with public compensation and apologies, but not with private apologies and compensation. Study 2 extends these findings by confirming that self-consistency mediates the relationships between moral identity internalization and private apologies and compensation, while social approval mediates the relationships between moral identity symbolization and public apologies and compensation. Unexpectedly self-consistency also mediated the effect of symbolization on public compensation. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Keywords: Moral identity; Compensation; Ethical brands; Customers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014829631830362X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:95:y:2019:i:c:p:455-463

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.07.042

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside

More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().