That is disgusting! Should I trust you?: The role of mindsets in brand trust after a negative incident.

AutorPuente-Diaz, Rogelio

1 Introduction

On July 22nd of 2016, La Costena - a Mexican corporate brand known, among other aspects, for its canned green chilies - woke up to the news that a picture (see Appendix A) showing two of its factory employees, one of them half-naked and apparently urinating on the green chilies, was uploaded to social media and had been viralized. The CEO of La Costena stated that the picture was real, but that it was impossible that one of the employees had urinated on the green chilies, and that more than 10,000 cans had been inspected without finding any trace of urine. As one would imagine, the CEO was concerned about losing consumers' trust in the hygiene and safety of La Costena products, considering the amount of attention given to the incident on the internet (see Figure 1). Theoretical and empirical work on brand trust in the food industry suggests that trust plays a key role (Lassoued & Hobbs, 2015). Given the importance of understanding brand trust after negative events or product crises, our investigation tries to shed light on how consumers' reactions might be explained by a variable known as mindsets or implicit theories.

In hypercompetitive environments, companies recognize the value and importance of product and corporate brands (Brexendorf & Keller, 2017; Tybout & Calkins, 2005). The importance of brands comes primarily from the relationships consumers develop with them (Alvarez & Fournier, 2016). Like in any relationship between two parties, one side could "make a mistake" or "be involved" in a negative event. These negative events could challenge and question the trust relationship formed between brands and consumers. Traditionally, business researchers have paid closer attention to how companies or brands handle the trust repairing efforts (Yin, Yu, & Poon, 2016) without paying as much attention to the characteristics of consumers. Yet, this general trend has started to shift. Specifically, recent developments in consumer behavior research have proposed that implicit theories or mindsets, and whether individuals believe personal characteristics are stable or malleable, might have important implications for understanding how consumers react to negative events involving product and corporate brands (Murphy & Dweck, 2016). These recent propositions also acknowledge that more empirical research is needed (Murphy & Dweck, 2016) based on real companies and business scenarios (Yin et al., 2016). Similarly, a recent literature review on product-harm crises makes a call for more research in different countries (Cleeren, Dekimpe, & van Heerde, 2017). Hence, the purpose of our investigation is to examine how consumers react to a negative event in which a strong, Mexican corporate brand from the food industry is involved, and assess if these reactions could be explained by individual differences in mindsets. In order to achieve our research goals, we first explain the importance of brand trust and some of its consequences: purchase intention and brand loyalty. We then explore the nature of implicit theories or mindsets, followed by an explanation of how they have been used in consumer research. Last, we propose how our current investigation might enhance our understanding of consumers' reactions after a negative event and develop research hypotheses.

1.2 Brand trust and its positive consequences

The concept of brand trust has important implications for general marketing and it is especially relevant for the food industry (Lassoued & Hobbs, 2015). In the buyer-seller relationship, consumers need to have confidence that corporate brands can assure the quality, safety, and hygiene of their food products. Hence, consumers need to trust corporate and product brands in order for a relationship to be established (Morgan & Hunt, 1994). Failing to develop trust would make the relationship between consumers and food brands difficult, if not impossible, to establish. Hence, it is not surprising to observe that brand trust has been widely examined in general marketing and the food industry.

One of the first empirical examinations, using over 100 brands from a wide range of categories, found that brand trust was a significant direct predictor of behavioral and attitudinal brand loyalty and that it indirectly influenced important marketing indicators such as market share and relative price as well (Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2001). Recent investigations focusing on different categories or industries, such as store brands and food, have also found support for the role of brand trust (Calvo-Porral & LevyMangin, 2016; Lassoued & Hobbs, 2015). Regarding specific empirical studies examining trust in the food industry, one found that brand trust had a positive relationship with trust in the food industry, which then influenced consumers' confidence. Consumers' confidence was then positively related to brand loyalty (Lassoued & Hobbs, 2015). These authors suggested that trust is particularly relevant in the food industry given that consumers might face uncertainty regarding how important actors (government regulators, companies, and brands) in the industry handle safety and hygiene issues. Similar results were obtained when examining the role of brand trust in the restaurant industry (Han, Nguyen, & Lee, 2015).

In the theoretical and empirical work just reviewed, general, context-independent trust was examined. While this research is valuable, we need to include the examination of trust after it has been questioned or challenged. One suggestion indicates that trust might play a more important role under conditions of uncertainty (Doney & Cannon, 1997). Hence, we need to include the examination of trust after negative events or product crises. For example, a longitudinal study on consumer confidence in the safety of food showed that trust in corporate brands was one of the strongest predictors of consumer confidence (de Jonge, van Ttrijp, Renes, & Frewer, 2010). In addition, this longitudinal study also established that media coverage of negative food incidents influenced consumers' memory of food incidents and confidence, suggesting that food safety and hygiene were relevant issues for consumers and that media coverage, to some extent, helped shape their views.

Regarding a specific product and brand failure closer to the one we seek to explore, researchers examined the role of trust in a well-known yogurt brand after it was involved in a negative incident (Dawar & Pillutla, 2000; Yannopoulou, Koronis, & Elliot, 2011). Specifically, the researchers examined if brand trust after a product failure (traces of mold) in the yogurt category was influenced by whether consumers personally experienced the product flaw or they read or heard about it through mass media outlets (Yannopoulou et al., 2011). The results showed that product failure had a stronger negative influence on brand trust when consumers read or heard about it on the news than when they had a personal experience with the product. Consumers that directly experienced the product flaw tended to forgive the brand and used words reflecting an incident that is malleable in nature (it was just a one-off, an unfortunate accident), suggesting that how malleable or fixed consumers believe brand performance to be has important implications for maintaining brand trust after a product failure. These results have important implications for our investigation for three reasons: 1) the research examined brand trust after a brand experienced a credibility crisis regarding the safety and hygiene of its products; 2) it assessed how mass media influenced brand trust, consistent with how the brand scandal of La Costena unfolded; 3) even though it did not specifically examine mindsets, the qualitative results reported in the article were consistent with the idea that words reflecting a malleable or fixed belief in things do play a role in consumers' discourse regarding brand trust.

Having established the role of brand trust in the food industry, we now turn our attention to explaining why mindsets or implicit theories might play an important role in consumers' reactions. We first review the general theoretical propositions of implicit theories, followed by their applications to a wide variety of consumer-related phenomena.

1.3 Implicit theories and consumer trust

At the core of implicit theories is the belief that entities (humans, brands, groups, companies) are fixed with little room for improvement, i.e a fixed mindset, or the belief that entities change, improve, and grow, i.e. a growth mindset (Dweck, 2000; Plaks, 2017). This simple, yet robust theoretical proposition has caught the attention of researchers in different areas, including organizational (Murphy & Dweck, 2010) and consumer behavior (Wheeler & Omair, 2016), with important implications for understanding brand trust after a brand has been involved in a negative incident. Specifically, consumers might believe that brands and companies show consistency and stability across time and/or that brands and companies show change and growth. There is evidence indicating that consumers can perceive brands as more stable or malleable (Aaker, Fournier, & Brasel, 2004). The belief that brands and companies are stable or malleable might influence a wide variety of marketing outcomes, including consumers' reactions after brands are involved in a negative event (Murphy & Dweck, 2016; Yin et al., 2016), which is the focus of our investigation.

In order to show how mindsets influence consumers' trust, we need to explain how consumers interact with brands and how mindsets influence consumers' cognition. Regarding the former, consumers develop relationships with brands (Alvarez & Fournier, 2016). During the process of relationship initiation and development, it is common for brands to make "mistakes" or "are involved" in negative events. For example, a well-known brand of yogurt in Greece and the rest of Europe had to recall thousands...

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