Applications of theories of interpersonal blame to consumer behavior have largely focused on understanding when consumers blame companies for their misbehavior. The current research moves beyond past work by shedding new light on the processes underlying consumer blame. In Essay 1, a pilot study and five experiments—in contexts of both fictitious and actual high-profile product failures—show that blame may be incorrectly directed toward the victim. The findings show that (1) consumers exaggerate blame for a victim possessing negative (especially immoral) dispositional traits because (2) that individual is seen as deserving of suffering in general and, as a result, (3) consumers are less likely to take punitive action against the company. The experiments support a “moral dominance” effect whereby victim blame is driven more heavily by perceived differences in the victim’s morality than sociability (or competence), because only morality leads consumers to judge the victim as deserving of suffering in general. In Essay 2, a new line of inquiry is proposed pertaining to consumer inferences of company blame and attitudes when the company engages in cause marketing. By engaging in socially responsible behavior, consumers may infer that the company is signaling a (1) negative attitude, (2) moral judgement, and (3) blame judgement toward the perpetrator of that harm. Each predicts the amount of praise the company receives—depending on consumers’ own attitudes, judgments, and blame toward the perpetrator—but blame inferences predict praise most strongly. This is because blame provides a unique signal about the company’s stance on an issue. Two studies support these blame inference predictions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uoregon.edu/oai:scholarsbank.uoregon.edu:1794/24188 |
| Date | 11 January 2019 |
| Creators | Reich, Brandon |
| Contributors | Madrigal, Robert |
| Publisher | University of Oregon |
| Source Sets | University of Oregon |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Rights | All Rights Reserved. |
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