The purpose of this paper is to advance understanding of how consumers respond to corporate ethical misconduct and how firms' crisis communication efforts shape those responses, with a particular focus on consumers' willingness to switch brands.
The study employs a scenario-based experiment using a 2 (misconduct severity: low vs. high) × 3 (response strategy: deny, diminish and rebuild) between-subjects design. Data were collected from a final sample of 188 consumers in the Baltic region and analyzed using moderated mediation analysis to examine the relationships between misconduct severity, perceived social value and switching intentions.
The findings show that a high level of corporate misconduct significantly increases consumers' willingness to switch brands, and this relationship is mediated by a decline in perceived social value. Contrary to expectations derived from crisis communication theory, rebuild strategies do not mitigate negative consumer responses. Instead, under conditions of severe misconduct, rebuilding responses are associated with an even stronger decline in perceived social value than denial strategies.
This study contributes to the literature on corporate social irresponsibility and crisis communication by identifying perceived social value as a key mechanism linking corporate misconduct to consumer switching behavior. The results further challenge assumptions regarding the effectiveness of accommodative crisis response strategies in situations involving severe ethical violations.
