ROHINI AHLUWALIA, ROBERT E. BURNKRANT, and H. RAO UNNAVA* Even though negative information about brands and companies is widely prevalent in the marketplace, except for case studies, there has been no systematic investigation of how consumers process negative in^' formation about the brands they like and use. In the three studies in this research, the authors attempt to bridge this gap. The findings of the first and second studies provide a theoretical framework for understanding' how consumers process negative information in the marketplace. Commitment of the consumer toward the brand is identified as a moder- ator of negative information effects. In the third study, the authors use this theoretical framework to derive and test response strategies that compa- nies can use to counter negative publicity for consumers who are high and low in commitment toward the brand. s Consumer Response to Negative Publicity: The Moderating Role of Commitment Incidents of negative publicity are widely prevalent in the publicity literature has examined this problem at jsome marketplace, ranging from safety concerns with Valujet air- length but has not converged on a unifying theoretical lines to tainted beef from Hudson foods. Such information framework. One underlying assumption in this literature is can be devastating, resulting in major losses of revenue and that negative information is almost always devastating. For market share. A study by DDB Needham Worldwide example, the Merriam formula used to determine the impact (Advertising Age 1995) finds that negative publicity and of media exposure gives negative news quadruple weight how the company handles it are among the most important compared with positive news (Kroloff 1988). Another as- factors influencing consumers' buying decisions. sumption in this literature is that consumers respond io the The potential impact of negative publicity is not surpris- negative publicity in a homogeneous manner (Mgrconi ing. Publicity is considered a relatively credible source of 1997; Pearson and Mitroff 1993). infonnation and therefore is more influential than other In general, case studies have been used to arrive atj con- marketer-driven communications (Bond and Kirshenbaum clusions about which strategies work and which do not seem 1998). Furthermore, negative as opposed to positive infor- to work in the marketplace (e.g., Chisholm 1998; Marconi mation is known to be more attention getting (Fiske 1980). 1997; Pearson and Mitroff 1993; Weinberger, Romed, and Despite the potential impact of negative publicity in the Piracha 1991). This literature, however, provides little di- marketplace, knowledge about its effects is limited. There is rection for understanding the problem from a theoretical little theoretical research dealing with how consumers perspective. For example, a typical project in this area '(e.g., process such information and how companies can develop Pearson and MiU-off 1993) presents a framework for crisis strategies to combat its effects. The puhlic relations and management based on the study of some companies in Crisis situations. Recommendations comprise general strategic di- rections (e.g., "Integrate crisis management into straitegic •Rohini Ahluwalia is Assistant Professor of Marketing, School of planning process," "Provide training and workshops in cri- Business, University of Kansas (e-mail: [email protected]). Robert E. Bumkrant is Professor (e-mail: [email protected]) and H. Rao Unnava sis management") without any attempt at understanding is Associate Professor of Marketing (e-mail: [email protected]). Fisher how consumers process this information and/or factor^ that College of Business, Ohio State University. This article is based on the first moderate its effects on consumer response. author's doctoral dissertation, which was awarded the 1997 John A. Howard Doctoral Dissertation Award by the American Marketing In the current research, we lay the foundation for a theo- Association. The first author acknowledges the financial support of the retical framework of negative information processing by fo- Graduate Student Alumni Award and the William R. Davidson Doctoral cusing on consumer processing of negative publicity infor- Fellowship in Marketing from the Ohio State University. The authors thank mation about a company's products. Although negative Punam Anand Keller, Zeynep Gurhan CanIi, Sanjay Mishra, Rich Petty, and Surendra Singh for their comments. To interact with colleagues on spe- publicity may also relate to other aspects of a company's cific articles in this issue, see "Feedback" on the JMR Web site at operations (e.g., human resource issues), we focus on prod- www.ama.org/pubs/jmr. uct-related publicity because of its preponderance (Dye 1997; Irvine 1992). Specifically, the objective of out re- Journal of Marketing Research, 203 Vol. XXXVII (May 2000), 203i-214 204 JOURNAL OF MARKETING RESEARCH, MAY 2000 search is to provide an understanding of how consumers re- deals with brands consumers are familiar with and toward act to negative product-related information about brands which they may have a prior attitude. Whether and under they like and use. what conditions the negativity effect applies to consumers Departing from prior research, which has assumed a ho- evaluating negative publicity information are addressed mogeneous consumer response to negative publicity infor- next. mation, we argue that prior characteristics of the con- sumer—specifically, commitment to the target brand— Attitude Strength moderate the processing and impact of negative publicity. In Recent research in consumer behavior indicates that con- a series of two studies, we test the differential responses to sumers become attached to various brands and form "rela- negative publicity of consumers who are high and low in tionships" with them (e.g., Fournier 1998), which results in commitment to the publicized brand, and we delineate the equity for the brand (e.g., Keller 1993). The attitudes that psychological processes responsible for this effect. The first consumers have for such brands are expected to vary in experiment measures commitment for a leading brand in the strength. Stronger attitudes are known to exhibit greater re- target product category, and the second manipulates com- sistance to information that attacks them, that is, negative mitment for a relatively low-share brand in the same prod- information (e.g.. Petty and Krosnick 1995). uct category. On the basis of the findings from the first two Many dimensions of attitude strength (e.g., prior knowl- studies, we propose and test (in Experiment 3) two types of edge, commitment, importance, extremity) have been iden- response strategies to counter negative publicity, depending tified in the literature. Recent research, however, has con- on the level of commitment of the consumers. We then dis- cluded that there is no unitary construct of attitude strength cuss the implications of our findings for marketers. (Krosnick et al. 1993; Petty and Krosnick 1995). Consequently, researchers in the area of attitude strength CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATION (Eagly and Chaiken 1995; Krosnick et al. 1993; Petty and Krosnick 1995) have issued a call for more research on the Negativity Effect individual dimensions of attitude strength and greater re- Although the literature is sparse on theoretical insights straint in generalizing the outcomes and processes obtained about consumer reaction to negative publicity about a from one dimension to another. known brand, the issue of how consumers process and inte- In this research, we examine the role of commitment, one grate negative information with positive information has of the attitude strength dimensions, as a moderator of nega- been studied in the impression formation literature in psy- tive information effects. We chose to focus on commitment chology (e.g., Fiske 1980; Klein 1996; Skowronski and for several reasons. First, commitment has been viewed as Carlston 1989). A typical study in this literature involves one of the two major dimensions of attitude strength giving subjects several pieces of information about a ficti- (Krosnick et al. 1993; Pomerantz, Chaiken, and Tordesillas tious person, some positive and some negative, and then as- 1995).' Second, commitment has been shown to play a crit- sessing the effects of negative information on the overall im- ical role in determining resistance to counterattitudinal in- pression subjects form of that person. formation. Specifically, the effect of several strength vari- A robust finding in the impression formation literature is ables, such as prior knowledge and importance, has been the negativity effect; that is, people place more weight on shown to depend on the person's level of commitment to- negative than positive information in forming overall evalu- ward the target (Wood, Rhodes, and Biek 1995). For exam- ations of a target (Fiske 1980; Klein 1996; Skowronski and ple, although knowledge can enable objective processing Carlston 1989). This effect has been found in person per- (inducing resistance to counter- and proattitudinal informa- ception as well as product evaluation contexts (e.g., Herr, tion) for people who are not committed to a brand/issue, it Kardes, and Kim 1991; Wright 1974). For example, can lead to biased processing for committed subjects (in- Maheswaran and Meyers-Levy (1990) find that when the ducing resistance to counter- but not proattitudinal informa- processing is focused on message content, negative framing tion). Third, commitment