The importance of factors influencing product-harm crisis management across different crisis extent levels: a conjoint analysis

Product-harm crises can seriously impact the viability of a company. By considering the factors that affect the outcome of a crisis, organisations could manage crisis situations to minimise negative consequences. The aims of this paper are to (a) examine the importance of each factor of product-harm crises (that is, corporate social responsibility, organisational response, time and external effects) influencing consumer purchase intentions and (b) study variations in the purchase intentions across three different crisis extent levels. In order to investigate trade-offs and the relative importance of the above factors, conjoint analysis is used. The results reveal that organisational response and time are the most important factors in high- and medium-extent product-harm crises, whereas social responsibility and external effects mostly influence consumer purchase intentions in severe crises. Based on the importance of the factors, managerial implications are discussed

The sustainability of using domestic tourism as a post-COVID-19 recovery strategy in a distressed destination

Tourism is a critical contributor to the gross domestic product, especially among developing countries like Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is a tourist destination that relies more on international travellers, a market which has been affected by the novel coronavirus. The purpose of this study is to establish the perceptions of domestic travellers and tourism managers on the sustainability of using domestic tourism as strategic responses to the impacts of the coronavirus. This study employs a qualitative methodology to examine the perceptions of the demand and supply side regarding the recovery options for Zimbabwean tourism post-pandemic. Online interviews with demand and supply participants were conducted. Data were analysed using thematic analysis, and the results were discussed. Results show that domestic tourism as a recovery option is unsustainable due to the challenges that Zimbabwe is facing, beyond the coronavirus

The risks of nation branding as crisis response:A case study of how the Danish government turned the Cartoon Crisis into a struggle with Globalization

In this article, we investigate the limitations of organization-centric models for crisis communication in handling place crises. Two distinct types of place crisis are identified as what we respectively term the ‘sudden’ and the ‘ongoing’ type. We point out that place branding traditionally has been used to handle the latter type. We then demonstrate how the inspiration from corporate communication in place branding has led to a fixation on reputation, which becomes salient when place branding is used as crisis communication in sudden crisis. Here the corporate inspiration tends to rule out alternative strategies for handling crises based on ‘societal models’. Through a case study of Denmark’s so-called Cartoon Crisis we demonstrate how crisis communication falls short of coping aptly with the complexity of the crisis due to the branding-inspired translation from ‘sudden’ to ‘ongoing’ crisis. We thus argue that the Danish government’s solution in nation branding aimed at the reputational implications failed to address the immediate consequences of the crisis vis-à-vis national security and exports. And that this solution in turn created the reputation as additional risk. We conclude that a broader societal perspective on crises therefore is needed in the emerging academic literature on place crisis communication