Measuring the impact of critical incidents on brand personality

To evaluate how occurring critical incidents change customer perceptions of brand personality, this study measures the impact on the basis of an online experiment. For this purpose, 1,132 usable responses are gathered considering the smartphone brands of Apple and Nokia as well as different critical incidents (corruption vs. product failure). Brand personality perceptions before and after these negative incidents are collected using the measurement model of Geuens, Weijters and De Wulf (2009). The measurement model is examined and the group specific factor scores are estimated. Based on these factor scores, latent means are calculated and hence reactions (personality shifts) are evaluated. The findings indicate that brand personality dimensions are not equally affected. Moreover, the results demonstrate that both brand equity and the business relationship before crisis moderate the effect of distinct critical incidents. -- Brand personality ; critical incidents ; negative publicity ; online experiment