What drives consumer’s responses to brand crisis? The moderating roles of brand associations and brand-customer relationship strength

Purpose This paper aims to investigate consumers’ attitudinal and behavioral responses to brand crisis and examine an empirical model to explain consumer’s internal process in the context of negative information about a brand, analyzing the relationships between the brand association types, brand-customer relationship strength and consumers’ responses depending on the types of brand crises. Design/methodology/approach This study uses an integrative approach based on qualitative and quantitative methods: a focus-group interview and an experiment. Findings The results indicated that consumers’ responses were more favorable in the corporate ability (CA) crisis than in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) crisis. In addition, consumers with high brand-customer relationship strength and brand associations for CA (CSR) showed more favorable responses to a brand crisis related to CA (CSR) than to that related to CSR (CA). Practical implications Managerially, firms should improve their marketing activity to reinforce particular brand association type that strongly related customers mainly have. In addition, firms should carefully find the best timing and channel that strongly related customers usually access, to present corporate corresponding statements in brand crisis and information of their corporate crisis-coping process. Originality/value Theoretically, this study will contribute to the literature on brand crises by providing critical insights into the mechanism underlying consumers’ responses to brand crises.