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A growing literature shows that (integral) emotions arising in response to firm transgressions may influence consumer punishment. However, incidental emotions (which are unrelated to the decision at hand) can also be powerful drivers of consumer decision-making and could influence responses to firm transgressions. This paper aims to examine the role of incidental gratitude, as compared to incidental pride and a control condition, in shaping the acceptance of questionable consumer behavior toward a transgressing firm and the mediating role of self-righteousness in this regard.

Four experimental studies are conducted to examine the effect of gratitude, as compared to pride and a control condition, on the acceptance of questionable consumer behavior against a transgressing firm. Further, this research tests the underlying mechanism and a boundary condition of the predicted effect.

The results show that consumers experiencing gratitude, as compared to pride and a control condition, judge a questionable consumer behavior directed against a transgressing firm as less acceptable. These different emotion effects are found to be explained by self-righteousness. The findings also demonstrate that an apology by the firm attenuates the effect of emotions on consumer response toward the transgressing firm.

The present research contributes to the literature on consumer punishment by identifying the role of incidental emotions in determining self-righteousness and ethical judgments. The research focuses on and contrasts the effects of two specific positive emotions – gratitude and pride.

This paper offers managerial implications for firms involved in a transgression by highlighting the potential of gratitude. Notably, the findings of this research suggest that gratitude activation via marketing communications may help firms mitigate the negative effects of transgression events.

The present research provides a novel perspective on when and how positive emotions, such as gratitude and pride, can differentially and systematically influence ethical judgment toward a transgressing firm.

Corporate apologies, relative to other responses to well-publicized past transgressions, have distinct implications, sparking a rich tradition of apology research. But in addition, each apology is unique, such that it becomes critical to address individual content (what), spokesperson (who), timing (when) and delivery (how) elements. This paper aims to clarify how people evaluate key apology elements (individually and collectively) and the associated trade-off between short-term risks (e.g. business costs) and long-term benefits (e.g. relational assets), in light of key contingency factors that represent the level of the transgression-related threat to the firm.

An in-depth conceptual review, analysis and synthesis of corporate apology theories, research, business practices and case examples underlie the development of a conceptual framework that features 6 key tenets and 16 formal, testable propositions.

The holistic apology framework details how and why different corporate apology elements individually and collectively influence firm performance, in the presence of key transgression-related factors. The outlined tenets and propositions, in turn, provide clear guidelines for how to design and implement effective corporate apology strategies in response to publicized transgressions, as well as a platform for academics to advance research in this domain.

This paper contributes to apology theories by proposing 6 key tenets and 16 formal, testable propositions, incorporating apology mechanisms, contingencies and strategies (i.e. corporate apology typology), thus providing a more comprehensive view of corporate apologies in the marketing discipline.

This paper introduces 6 official tenets and 16 associated propositions that collectively (and interactively) serve as strategic guidelines for managers and opportunities for academics to advance research in this domain.

The proposed conceptual framework offers a novel, holistic understanding of the fundamental components of a corporate apology.

This paper investigates the substance of institutions in the context of business ethics. In particular, I test a theory of stakeholder attention to resource commitments by firms that implement the Ethics and Compliance Officer (ECO) position, from 1990 to 2008. Results support the hypothesized curvilinear relationship between resource commitments and stakeholder attention – while both high and low levels of ECO implementation generate low levels of reported ethics transgressions (the former due to good firm behavior and the latter due to stakeholder disengagement), moderate ECO implementation produces elevated transgression reports (due to raised expectations and increased engagement). Contrary to extant theory, results are consistent across both internal and external firm stakeholder groups.

The decision regarding ethics and compliance management (ECM) adoption and its actual implementation is usually deliberated as an important corporate social responsibility (CSR) matter. Building on the strategic choice perspective, this study aims to investigate the forces and mechanisms underlying the link between ECM adoption and its substantial implementation.

The study is based on survey data of multi-national companies (MNCs) in Asia.

The authors find that firms adopt ECM initiatives due to the impact of critical field events coupled with institutional mimesis and the salience of risk reduction. Moreover, reinforced by top management support and ethics transgressions, firms are inclined to engage in sincere ECM implementation.

The study examines important antecedents of ECM adoption and implementation in market MNCs. In doing so, it contributes to the broader CSR literature.

An emerging stream of research has identified critical events as spikes in societal interest that increase public attention to firm behavior and can function as exogenous triggers for change. With respect to misconduct, firms vary considerably in how they respond to critical events, and for a visible change in their undesirable behavior to transpire, there needs to be ongoing accumulation of work by social-control agents. While social-control agents are often boundedly rational in their decision-making, most studies have overlooked the ability of critical events to restrict or redirect collective attention among such agents. Drawing on the case of a regulatory agency’s enforcement actions against violations of anti-money laundering regulations by three European banks, we investigate the influence of critical events on social-control agents’ enforcement behavior. This study achieves two goals: first, we identify three types of fieldwide critical events that influence social-control agents’ behavior, and second, we demonstrate that these events may shape the regulatory environment in which firms operate, thus allowing for different organizational responses to enforcement actions. Our findings contribute to the literature on critical events and organizational misconduct.

Corporate scandals involving senior executives plague many businesses. Although customers and noncustomers may be exposed to news of the same scandal, they may appraise dimensions of the transgression differently, thereby affecting post-scandal patronage intentions. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether and how consumer-firm affiliation affects future patronage intentions by examining nuances in customers’ vs noncustomers’ reactions toward the transgressor’s professional performance and immoral behavior.

Four between-subjects experimental studies were used to test whether performance-relevant and/or immorality-relevant pathways drive customers’ vs noncustomers’ post-scandal patronage intentions. The results were analyzed using analysis of variance, parallel mediation and serial mediation.

The results demonstrate that performance judgment, and not immorality judgment, drive the relationship between consumer-firm affiliation and post-scandal patronage intentions (Study 1a), regardless of the order of information presented (Study 1b). Customers form more positive performance judgments because they give more weight to performance-related information (Study 2), demonstrating a sequential effect of consumer-firm affiliation on post-scandal patronage intentions only through the performance-relevant, and not immorality-relevant, pathway (Study 3).

This research contributes to the literature on social distance and moral judgments. Future research should examine other deleterious outcomes such as brand sabotage and negative word-of-mouth, as well as potential moderators including repeated transgressions and prevalence of the infraction in other firms.

This research offers important nuances for understanding how performance and immorality judgments differentially operate and affect post-scandal patronage intentions. The findings highlight the strategic value of communicating the leader’s performance (e.g. professional contributions) as a buffer against potential declining patronage.

Offering new insights into the extant literature and lay beliefs which contend that harsh moral judgment reduces patronage intentions, this research uncovers why and how exposure to the same scandal can result in varying moral judgments that subsequently influence patronage intentions. Importantly, this research shows that the performance-relevant pathway can explain why customers have higher post-scandal patronage intentions compared to noncustomers.

This paper aims to contribute to the emerging body of research on firestorms, specifically on the inflammatory user-generated content (UGC) created in response to brand transgressions. By analyzing and segmenting UGC created and shared in the wake of three different events, the authors identify which type of inflammatory message is most likely to be widely shared; thus, contributing to a possible online firestorm.

Tweets were collected involving brand transgressions in the retail, fast food and technology space from varying timeframe and diverse media coverage. Then, the tweets were coded for message intention and analyzed with linguistics software to determine the message characteristics and framing. A two-step cluster analysis identified three types of UGC.

The authors found that message dimensions and the framing of tweets in the context of brand transgressions differed in characteristics, sentiment, call to action and the extent to which the messages were shared. The findings contradict traditional negative word-of-mouth studies involving idiosyncratic service and product failure. During online brand firestorms, rational activism messages with a call to action, generated in response to a firm’s transgression or “sparks,” have a higher likelihood of being shared (virality).

This research provides novel insights into UGC created after brand transgressions. Different types of messages created after these events vary in the extent that they “fan the flames” of the transgression. A message typology and flowchart are provided to assist managers in identifying and responding to three message types: ash, sparks and embers.

This study aims to examine how brand transgression (BT) affects brand relationship quality (BRQ). Brand forgiveness (BF) and brand evangelism (BE) are tested as mediators between BT and BRQ. This study advances knowledge in consumer behavior by showing how consumers offer to deal with their relationships with brands through BE and BF. This provides relevant information to managers to seek strategies to obtain forgiveness from consumers in case the unfortunate happens. Not only must they seek to obtain forgiveness but also seek ways to ensure BE of their brands. These act as buffers for the brands in case a transgression happens.

Using a survey approach, this study tests whether forgiveness mediated the relationship between BT and BRQ. Also, whether BE mediated the relationship between BT and BRQ was examined. The test was conducted using PROCESS bootstrapping method (Model 4 of Hayes [2018]).

Consistent with the predictions, this study finds that, following a BT, consumers engage in BE and BF to maintain the relationship they have already established with their brands.

This study extends the existing literature by showing that after a BT, response from consumers may take different forms. The consumer’s response or the relationship with the brand may be affected by whether the consumer forgives the brand or evangelizes about the brand. Based on the cognitive dissonance theory, the results of this study imply that, forgiveness and BE act as important mechanisms in understanding consumer-brand relationships after brands act unacceptably. Further, this study contributes to the social media brand management literature by investigating a real-world BT case of social media.

This paper aims to explore and discuss the concept of brand forgiveness. It empirically assesses the relationships among three types of brand transgressions, brand forgiveness and three consumer coping strategies.

A 3 × 2 research design is used to evaluate the effects of three types of brand transgression (performance, image and value) and two degrees of severity (high vs low) for brand forgiveness. Then, this paper use a 2 × 3 research design, evaluating two degrees of brand forgiveness (high vs low) together with their effects on three different consumer coping strategies (switching, attacking and purchasing again). Using a representative sample of 472 US consumers, various hypotheses related to these research designs are tested.

The results show that almost half (48 per cent) of the consumers are unlikely or very unlikely to forgive a brand compared to about a third (32 per cent) who are likely or very likely to forgive. The results of ANOVA show the more severe the brand transgression, the less likely the forgiveness. Consumers who are more likely to forgive are less likely to avoid the brand or engage in attacking behaviors; they are also more likely to purchase the brand again. The results of regression analyses show that consumers witnessing a performance-based brand transgression are more likely to forgive the brand than in the case of image- or value-based brand transgressions.

This paper explores and outlines the brand forgiveness construct, both theoretically and empirically.

Moral transgressions committed by person-brands can negatively impact consumers through the transgression’s diagnosticity (severity, centrality and consistency). This paper aims to test how a transgression’s centrality and consistency impact important consumer perceptions and behavioral intentions toward a person-brand, holding constant the transgression in question. These outcomes are crucial for person-brands to understand how to minimize and manage the impact of a given transgression.

This paper uses three online consumer experiments to manipulate transgression diagnosticity via centrality and consistency and identifies the resulting impact on consumer-brand identification, trustworthiness and consumer digital engagement intentions through PROCESS models.

High-diagnosticity transgressions lower consumer digital engagement intentions regarding the person-brand and their endorsed products. This effect is serially mediated by consumer-brand identification, as predicted by social identity theory, and by perceived trustworthiness of the person-brand.

Person-brands should emphasize the nondiagnostic nature of any transgressions in which they are involved, including a lack of centrality and consistency with their brand, and guard against the appearance of diagnostic transgressions.

This paper shows that transgression diagnosticity impacts consumer engagement through the pathway of consumer-brand identification and trustworthiness. It also manipulates aspects of diagnosticity that can be influenced by the person-brand (centrality and consistency) while holding the transgression constant. As such, this paper extends the literature on transgressions, on person-branding strategy, and on social identity theory.