In stories we trust: How narrative apologies provide cover for competitive vulnerability after integrity-violating blog posts ¬リニ

a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: First received in 28, October 2008 and was under review for 8 months Area editor: Stephan Wuyts Keywords: Attitude Cognition Consumer behavior Denial Empathy Imagery Market orientation Marketing strategy Customer relationship management and customer satisfaction Electronic commerce and internet marketing Information processing Intention–behavior link Market analysis and response Organization behavior Public policy Services marketing Transportation Trust repair Empirical generalizations Consumers' confidence in companies has fallen due to recent and widespread violations of integrity and consumers' voicing of discontent in weblog (blog) posts. Current research on integrity restoration offers little guidance regarding appropriate responses. We posit that not only what (with which content) but also how (in which format) the company responds, contributes to an effective restoration of integrity and a reduction of consumers' intentions to switch. The results of Study 1 show that the combination of denial content and analytical format as well as apologetic content and narrative format works better than combinations of opposing response content and format. Comparing narrative apologies and denials in two consecutive studies, we demonstrate that the concept of " transportation " —the engrossing effect of a narrative—is the mechanism underlying narrative-based integrity restoration. We further assess in Study 2 how the use of empathy accounts for higher levels of transportation and perceived integrity. In Study 3, we establish that a personal response by the involved employee is more effective than a response issued by the company's spokesperson. Consumers trust in stories from the involved employee. Weblog (blog) posts keep gaining in importance and are dramatically influencing the way consumers process and share information (Woodside, Sood, & Miller, 2008) and make purchase decisions (Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2006). It is these stories that present-day consumers have come to trust. Recent and widespread online violations of integrity and consumers' voicing of discontent form a threat to consumers' confidence in companies (Ward & Ostrom, 2006). Even unconfirmed posts can develop rapidly into stories with serious destructive potential and are a source of severe competitive vulnerability because consumers switch to competitors at virtually no cost to American Airlines and Kryptonite, have experienced massive exits by consumers based on posts on anonymous blogs. For such companies, a strategy of reticence, or hoping that the storm of negative word-of-mouth will just blow over, is no longer effective in the changing competitive landscape. Rather, the highly …