Managing negative publicity : A quantitative study on how negative publicity affects the consumer

Sammanfattning: Background: A brand’s reputation can take many years to build up, although the value of the brand is not forever. Accidents, scandals or product safety incidents associated to a certain corporation can affect a brands reputation. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010 led to much information being spread around regarding BP, the company behind the accident. The environment took damage and BP endured a lot of negative publicity. Purpose: To gain knowledge about the effects on a company suffering from negative publicity and how they could proceed in order to minimize the damage. Delimitations: This study is based on the company BP and their incident in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. The investigation was done in the United States of America on American customers with a population restricted to car owners as the study examines purchase behavior. Method: The research was conducted through a deductive quantitative approach. The data sources were collected by an archival analysis and an electronic questionnaire. Conclusion: If the information received from media and from word-of-mouth after an incident (like BP’s oil spill) is considered as negative towards the company, this leads to a decrease in positive attitudes among customers that in turn affects purchase behavior negatively. It is important to implement strategies in the company as a foundation against negative publicity. The study shows that the most influencing strategies on consumer attitudes were corporate social responsibility followed by brand positioning.