Secondary Crisis Communication on Social Media: the Role of Corporate response and Social Influence in Product-harm Crisis

Because of a large number of customers using social media, firms have embraced social media as a useful communication tool during product-harm crises. However, current knowledge on the relationships between corporate crisis response, customer secondary crisis communication, and customer purchase intention remains limited. Based on an economic view, this study proposes a model to examine how corporate crisis response affects customer secondary crisis communication and finally influence purchase intention in social media context. In addition to the direct effects, this study investigates the moderating effect of social influence in the above relationships based on social influence theory. The empirical results show that corporate crisis response could decrease customer secondary crisis communication, thus lessening the negative impact on customer purchase intention in the social media context. The findings further confirm the moderating role of customers’ perceived social influence in the above relationships. We conclude with implications and suggestions for future research.