Abstract:

In recent years, product safety industrial crisis has been frequently occurring. Then, how to get over the negative effects quickly and clear up all doubts efficiently? It is not only the government’s great challenge but also the suspected firms and the industry’s challenge to alleviate consumer’s anxiety and rebuild the brand trust as well as push the involved industry towards on track. This paper investigates that when product safety industrial crisis happens, do firms’ responses and the industry association’s response take effect? Further, does the industry association’s response play a more important role? Why? This paper finds that the industry association’s response is more effective than the firms’ responses because the industry association is with higher credibility. Besides, we explore the effect of the industry association’s response from three dimensions which are types of crisis, consumer involvement and suspected brands’ reputation. The result shows that industry association’s response is obviously essential when the crisis is indefensible or consumer involvement is low or suspected brands’ reputation is low.

Key words: product safety industrial crisis, industry spillover effect, industry association.