caa a22 4500 605484244 CHVBK 20210128100435.0 cr unu---uuuuu 210128e20150901xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s10551-014-2258-9 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s10551-014-2258-9 Corporate Social ‘Irresponsibility': Are Consumers' Biases in Attribution of Blame Helping Companies in Product-Harm Crises Involving Hybrid Products? [Elektronische Daten] [Sergio Carvalho, Etayankara Muralidharan, Hari Bapuji] In recent years, there have been several high-profile recalls of hybrid products (those where organizations in multiple countries take part in the design, component sourcing, manufacturing, and marketing of a product). If consumers perceive a global firm to be responsible for the recall, then it will reduce their brand equity. Therefore, global firms may respond in ethically questionable ways to justify themselves to important stakeholders and avoid blame. Understanding how stakeholders attribute blame for crises involving hybrid products is important to shed light on the unethical manner in which global firms might avoid blame in such situations. The research reported here shows that in a hybrid product crisis, consumers show a bias in favor of the brand company and against the manufacturing company. This bias is more pronounced when the country of manufacture has an unfavorable image or when consumers lack familiarity with the recalled brand. Ambiguous recall announcements by companies that fail to provide a specific and clear reason for the product defect prompt consumers to assume that a manufacturing flaw caused the product defect. As a result, consumers reduce their attribution of blame for the brand company, and thus its brand equity is maintained. Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht, 2014 Product recall nationallicence Attribution of blame nationallicence Brand familiarity nationallicence Hybrid products nationallicence Carvalho Sergio Rowe School of Business, Faculty of Management, Dalhousie University, Kenneth C. Rowe Mgmt Bldg., 6100 University Avenue, PO Box 15000, B3H 4R2, Halifax, NS, Canada aut Muralidharan Etayankara MacEwan University School of Business, Grant MacEwan University, Edmonton, AB, Canada aut Bapuji Hari Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada aut Journal of Business Ethics Springer Netherlands 130/3(2015-09-01), 651-663 0167-4544 130:3<651 2015 130 10551 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2258-9 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2258-9 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Carvalho Sergio Rowe School of Business, Faculty of Management, Dalhousie University, Kenneth C. Rowe Mgmt Bldg., 6100 University Avenue, PO Box 15000, B3H 4R2, Halifax, NS, Canada aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Muralidharan Etayankara MacEwan University School of Business, Grant MacEwan University, Edmonton, AB, Canada aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Bapuji Hari Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Journal of Business Ethics Springer Netherlands 130/3(2015-09-01), 651-663 0167-4544 130:3<651 2015 130 10551