摘要:本研究聚焦于探讨并揭示产品伤害危机对涉事企业后续新产品推广的潜在溢出效应,以及危机发生后涉事企业推出哪种类型的新产品更有助于规避此种溢出效应、提升消费者采纳意愿。基于三项消费行为实验的研究结果表明,在危机事件后,相对于涉事企业推出的渐进型新产品,消费者对其推出的突破型新产品采纳意愿更高:新产品类型通过感知相似性与感知风险的链式中介作用对消费者采纳意愿产生影响。此外,危机后新产品类型对消费者采纳意愿的影响还会受到产品外观新颖性的调节。本研究结论不仅有助于拓展有关产品伤害危机溢出效应以及新产品采纳意愿影响因素的现有认知,而且能够为存在危机史且正在寻求“破局”的企业提供有价值的参考。
Abstract: In recent years, with the development of Internet and social media, the occurrence of product-harm crisis (PHC) and its spillover effect on similar products has become a fairly common phenomenon. Extended from existing studies, the present research focuses on examining the potential spillover effect of a firm's previous PHC on its subsequent new product adoption, and whether the firm's product innovativeness is helpful to inhibit such spillover effect and thus repair the brand-customer relationship. Based on the associative network model, it is proposed that the preceding performance of a firm's products provides meaningful reference for consumers to evaluate its new products, especially when there was extremely negative event (i.e., PHC). Furthermore, based on the assimilation and contrast effect model, the previous PHC would have stronger negative impact on the new product which is more comparable and similar to the problematic product. To verify the propositions, the authors conduct three experimental studies. Study 1 aims to examine whether a firm's product innovativeness after PHC can reduce the spillover effect of PHC. The results show that consumers are more willing to adopt the radical (or really) new products than the incremental new products provided by the firms precedingly involved in PHC. Study 2 replicates the results and further explore the psychological mechanism underlying the effect of new product type on consumer adoption after PHC. It is found that consumers' perceived similarity and perceived risk play the chain mediating role in above effect. The purpose of study 3 is to investigate the potential moderating role of visual novelty. The results reveal that the effect of new product type on consumer adoption is weakened when the visual novelty is high (vs. low).The findings of this research are helpful to enrich the existing cognition about the spillover effect of PHC as well as the influencing factors of new product adoption. In addition, this research provides valuable managerial implications for firms who are seeking to bounce back and regain the favor of customers after the failure of PHC.