How do we react when companies respond?

Sammanfattning

Geopolitical conflicts have increasingly exposed multinational firms to consumer boycott pressure, raising the question of how companies should respond to protect consumer relationships. This thesis examines how corporate response strategies to geopolitical boycott pressure influence purchase intention and brand trust among university students in Sweden. While crisis communication and consumer boycott behavior have been studied separately, the intersection of these two streams has received limited empirical attention. Using a quantitative between-subjects vignette survey experiment conducted among students at Lund University, this study compares four response strategies: Denial, Minimization, Corrective Action, and Market Exit. The findings indicate that Corrective Action and Market Exit generated significantly more favorable results than Denial and Minimization across both dependent variables, while the two defensive strategies did not differ significantly from each other. Moreover, female respondents reported significantly lower purchase intention than male respondents. These findings underscore the importance of firms' actions when facing geopolitically driven consumer pressure.