Exploring the Relationship of CSR and Consumer Product Response in a Product-harm Crisis – An Example of Smart Phones

Abstract

In recent years there are quite a lot of product harm crises Some are food made from harmful ingredients and some are defected products Meanwhile there are more and more firms put effort into CSR to contribute to global sustainability How will CSR interact with a product-harm crisis has become a popular research topic Many researches are aimed at exploring the CSR’ s influences on firms’ financial performances or marketing effectiveness in a product-harm crisis However there are few researches focus on consumers’ confidence or trust in the cability of product itself Also current researches use CSR as a variable but not all the firms’ CSR practices are known by people Thus this research aims at exploring the influences of CSR reputation on consumers perceived reliability in a product-harm crisis In this research experimental approach is used to investigate how consumers’ s evaluation of the products will be affected by CSR reputation in a product-harm crisis Product harm crises and CSR reputation are both divided into two levels resulted in four scenarios in total The results show that CSR reputation moderates the effect of a product-harm crisis on perceived reliability Also perceived reliability mediates the effect of a product-harm crisis on purchase intention In consequence whether a product-harm crisis happens or not CSR reputation gives firms high perceived reliability Therefore it is encouraged that firms proactively realize their corporate social responsibility not only for global sustainability but also for attaining a protection in crises

Date of Award	2018 Jul 18
Original language	English
Supervisor	Quey-Jen Yeh (Supervisor)