Abstract:

This paper explores how entrepreneurs’ negative exposure events affect consumer perception of his or her image through three experiments. To clarify the internal influence mechanism with the evidence from the previous literature, we divide entrepreneur negative exposure event into two types: incompetence and immorality. Experiment 1 indicates that compared with the negative exposure of incompetence, when the entrepreneur is encountered with immorality, consumer’s evaluation on the entrepreneur’s image will be lower. The results of Experiment 2 shows that when the entrepreneur is encountered with negative exposure of incompetence, compared with defense strategy, accommodation strategy is better for reducing the negative consumer's evaluation on the entrepreneur. On the other side, when the entrepreneur is encountered with negative exposure of immorality, for reducing the negative consumer's evaluation on entrepreneurs, defense strategy is better than accommodation strategy. Furthermore, experiment 3 indicates that for different image traits of entrepreneur, whether expertise or trustworthiness, the results of Experiment 2 are also suitable, except the variances are different.

Key words: competence, morality, negative exposure, entrepreneur’s image, response strategy