The impact of corporate reputation on brand attitude and purchase intention

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore the influences of the negative corporate CEO and corporate social responsibility reputations on the changes in consumers' brand attitudes and purchase intentions. To perform this study purpose, we proposed the relationships between brand awareness and perceived quality and initial brand attitude and purchase intention by relying on the hierarchy of effects model; then we assessed the changes in brand attitude and purchase intention after providing information on negative corporate reputation. Multiple regression analysis and paired samples T-tests were conducted to test the hypothesized relationships using a convenience sample of 212 respondents. The empirical results support significant effects of brand awareness and perceived quality on brand attitude and purchase intention. Furthermore, respondents' brand attitudes and purchase intentions are reduced after they are being provided with the information on negative corporate reputation. This result confirms that negative corporate reputation significantly aggravates consumers' attitudes and purchase intention. However, the type of reputation is not a decisive factor for consumers' cognitive processes. The results imply that marketing managers need to manage a negative reputation carefully because negative corporate reputation aggravates consumers' cognitive process However, consumers are not influenced by specific type of negative information, thus a company can mitigate the negative impact of their negative reputation by another type of positive reputation.