Consumer response to corporate irresponsible behavior: Moral emotions and virtues

By S. Grappi, Simona Romani, Richard P. Bagozzi. 2013

457 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A unique theoretical framework for explaining consumer word of mouth and protest behaviors against corporate irresponsibility is developed and tested. Through field surveys with adult consumers, this study demonstrates how consumers' negative moral emotional responses to corporate infractions instigate, in combination with other-regarding virtues, negative word of mouth and protest toward the corporation. Negative moral emotions include contempt, anger, and disgust; whereas other-regarding virtues entail justice, beneficence, equality, and communal cooperation. The results provide scholars and managers with means of improving their understanding and handling of consumers' reactions to corporate irresponsibility.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Information Systems and Management, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1e54df4482f83be9fb5a03817655270ce71ea27e

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cognitive Neuroscience

In Information Systems and Management

In Social Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Consumers’ Responses to Public Figures’ Transgression: Moral Reasoning Strategies and Implications for Endorsed Brands (2016, background): “For instance, it would be interesting to examine whether specific moral emotions (e.g., empathy, contempt, anger, and disgust; Grappi et al. 2013) triggered by a transgression motivate certain types of moral reasoning strategy.”
Business ethics, corporate social responsibility, and brand attitudes: An exploratory study (2019, methodology): “All constructs contained a minimum of three items, with the exception of questions on perceived response to CSR and ethical behavior, which were measured using a single item from previous research evaluating a company's behavior (Grappi et al., 2013).”
The role of moral emotions and individual differences in consumer responses to corporate green and non-green actions (2015, methodology): “…recent research that shows other-regarding virtues (e.g., justice, beneficence, equality, and communal cooperation) moderate elicitation of CAD (Grappi et al. 2013); capacity for gratitude is also associated positively with empathy or perspective taking (McCullough et al. 2002) and altruistic…”
Shame on Who? The Effects of Corporate Irresponsibility and Social Performance on Organizational Reputation (2019, unknown): “These instances are therefore likely to create the most heightened, negative emotional response from stakeholders (Grappi et al., 2013).”
The impact of attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control on managers’ intentions to behave ethically (2018, background): “The value of our research lies in the pragmatic tradition of philosophy – to offer solutions to ever-increasing unethical practices in the workplace which are damaging the corporate image and reputation (Grappi et al., 2013).”
Consumer responses to corporate social irresponsibility: The role of moral emotions, evaluations, and social cognitions (2019, background): “Some of those studies investigate only the mediating role of moral emotions (Antonetti and Maklan, 2016a, 2017), while others further explore moderators of the mediating processes (Grappi et al., 2013a; Xie et al., 2015).”
Assessing tourists' cognitive, emotional and behavioural reactions to an unethical destination incident (2016, methodology): “A confirmatory factor analysis based on a seven-factormodelwas specified,with anger, disgust and contempt loadingonto the secondorder factor ‘hostility emotions’, as suggested by recent studies on consumers' reactions to corporate misconduct scenarios (Grappi et al., 2013; Liu et al., 2011).”