An Institutional perspective of consumer behaviour in industry-wide crisis

Product-harm crises strike fear into consumers and prove devastating for companies caught up in them. Previous product-harm crisis studies have mainly focused on consumer behaviour during discrete crises involving a single firm. An increasing number of product-harm crises occur at an industry-wide level. However, industry-wide crises are triggered by corporate misconduct permeating an industry. These crises differ from individual firm crises because they are attributable to institutional factors such as regulation and enforcement, industry norms, and ethical cultures. Integrating insights from institutional theory with consumer psychology theories can help us understand consumer behaviour during industry-wide crises and provide new insights for marketing research and practice. This thesis is based on three empirical papers that investigate consumers' perceptions and judgment and their impacts on purchase decisions from an institutional perspective