 How corporate social responsibility (CSR) saves a company: The role of gratitude in buffering vindictive consumer behavior from product failuresJunghyun Kim and Taehoon Park Journal of Business Research, 2020, vol. 117, issue C, 461-472 Abstract: Product failures often lead consumers to engage in vindictive behaviors. Dissatisfied consumers can easily share their negative product/service experiences with others online and often deliberately express their frustration in ways that harm companies (e.g., brand sabotage). Hence, minimizing such behaviors after a product failure is critical to maintaining long-term customer relationships for companies. The present research demonstrates how a company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement mitigates vindictive consumer behaviors in response to a product failure from the company. We suggest that the buffering effect of CSR engagement is driven by consumers’ feelings of gratitude for a priori pro-social effort and its impact on the perceived trustworthiness of the company. We also propose failure attribution (i.e., internal vs. external) as a boundary condition that moderates the buffering effect through consumer gratitude and trustworthiness. Keywords: Corporate social responsibility; Gratitude; Trustworthiness; Vindictive consumer behavior; Product failure (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:117:y:2020:i:c:p:461-472 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.06.024 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 |
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