| Pub. Date | : Dec, 2020 |
|---|---|
| Product Name | : The IUP Journal of Brand Management |
| Product Type | : Article |
| Product Code | : IJBRM11220 |
| Author Name | Javed Shaikh and Jinal Parikh |
| Availability | : YES |
| Subject/Domain | : Marketing |
| Download Format | : PDF Format |
| No. of Pages | : 34 |
It is significant to study the impact of controversy on consumer perceptions and emotions during and post controversy. The paper examines whether the controversy-led brand perceived quality and associations had any impact on brand trust and loyalty of instant noodle brand Maggi in India. The techniques used in this study include two parts, primary and secondary research. The secondary research concentrates on the impact of brand controversy on consumers' emotions and quality perceptions and also how Nestle India tackled numerous consumer affairs during and post controversy to establish brand at a pre-controversy level. The primary research investigates the role of brand perceived quality and brand associations in building brand loyalty through brand trust as a mediator during controversy. The findings reveal that even during and post controversy, relationship between brand trust and brand loyalty remains intact because of consumers' emotional trust attached with the brand for more than three decades in India. However, during and post controversy, consumers' attitudinal and behavioral brand loyalty dropped as far as negative quality perceptions were concerned due to the fact that lead and MSG were found in Maggi samples. While considering the paucity of research associated with food brand controversy, this study not only identifies the glitches confronted by the brand, but also recommends crisis response communication strategies as a form of guidelines to avoid such damage to any food brand in future. With the help of attribution theory, we suggest strategies for managerial implications.
It takes time, money and efforts to build a brand. Brands are the vital strength of the parent firm; and managers persistently struggle to enhance brand equity and total value (Dutta and Pullig, 2011). Brands are also delicate due to varied forms of product faults which drive brand crises and controversy. Brand crises or brand-related adverse events (referred to here as brand controversy) are common and vastly exposed in public domain. Because of these frequent crises, firms in general are anticipating to face the risk of severe impact on firms' financial value, negative publicity (Hegner et al., 2014), collaborative brand attacks on social networking sites (Rauschnabel et al., 2016) and brand controversy as a whole (Banerjee, 2018). Brand controversy becomes unavoidable in current times and no organization would afford to have it for a long time (Yannopoulou et al., 2011), because it can potentially result