Effect of spokesperson types and the use of first person pronoun in crisis communication on food organization reputation and purchase intention

Abstract

This study aims to better understand the effectiveness of using spokespersons and first person pronouns in two crisis situation clusters on food organization’s reputations and purchase intentions. Two hundred and eight students were randomly assigned into 12 experiment groups, creating a 2 (crisis clusters: victim vs preventable) X 3 (spokesperson types: CEO vs cartoon vs non-spokespersons) X 2 (first person pronouns: “I” vs “we”) factorial design. Data were collected using a questionnaire and analyzed using mean, standard deviation, and 3-way MANOVA. The results showed no significant effects of using different spokesperson and first person pronoun types on organization reputations in both victim and preventable crisis situation clusters, but the different effects were found on purchase intentions in both crisis clusters. When the organization was in the victim situation cluster, using cartoon with “I” first person pronoun can generate the highest purchase intention score. In the preventable crisis cluster, using CEO with “I” first person pronoun can generate the highest purchase intention score.