• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.47-56
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• 2020

Purpose: This study aims to explore how consumers respond to the immoral actions of a CEO. More specifically, this research focuses on the moral reasoning processes used by consumers in order to maintain support for the CEO despite the immoral action. In addition, this research suggests that support for the CEO would improve product purchase intention. Research design, data, and methodology: To test the hypotheses presented, an online research company was hired and online survey was conducted with adult participants. Online research company sent an email to the potential subjects asking their participation in an online survey. Subjects were able to participate in the online survey by clicking a link to the survey. When the participants clicked the link, they were instructed to read a fictitious newspaper article on a CEO's immoral action. And then, they were asked to answer several questions online. Responses were obtained from 336 adults participants and data were analyzed using SPSS Hayes Macro for a moderation effect and AMOS for a structural equation model. Result: Moral reasoning processes were divided into moral decoupling and moral rationalization and analyzed to determine their influence on product purchase. Also in this study, we suggest the public self-consciousness of consumers as an antecedent of moral reasoning processes, and argue that consumers with high public self-consciousness are more likely to engage in moral decoupling than moral rationalization. Conclusions: Our results showed that moral decoupling and moral rationalization improved the consumer's perception of corporate ethicality, which increased product purchase intention. In addition, consumers with high public self-consciousness were more likely to engage in moral decoupling than in moral rationalization. In addition, this research suggested that severity of the scandal would moderate the impact of public self-consciousness on moral decoupling. However, this hypothesis was not supported statistically since most participants perceived the scandal to be a highly severe incident, that may lead to an insignificant interaction effect between severity of the scandal and public self-consciousness. This research expands the scope of available research on corporate ethics and consumer responses to negative information involving celebrities and provides practical implications for corporate crisis management.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.17 no.8
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• pp.77-85
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• 2019

Purpose - The use of celebrity endorsers is a strategy long-since used by companies to improve the persuasive impact of their company's advertising. However, much like anyone else, celebrities are flawed human beings, and therefore often find themselves involved in scandals. Companies must consider the potential of scandals when using a celebrity endorser to represent their brand or product. This research focuses on the process consumers use to justify scandals involving celebrity endorsers. Specifically, this research divides the justification processes used by consumers to maintain support for celebrities involved in a scandal into moral decoupling and moral rationalization and proposes antecedents and consequences for these processes. Methodology - To verify the hypotheses suggested by this study, an online survey was conducted, and data was analyzed using a structural equation model. Result - Results showed that consumer empathy for the celebrity endorser and external attribution of the scandal presented were positively related to moral decoupling and moral rationalization. In addition, moral rationalization was positively related to consumers' attitude towards the celebrity endorser, which also enhanced brand attitude. However, the relationship between moral decoupling and the consumer's attitude toward the celebrity endorser was not statistically significant. Conclusion - This research serves to expand the scope of available research on the persuasiveness of celebrity endorsers and provides practical guidelines for marketers.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.48-62
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• 2017

The present empirical research examines the effect of team leader's ethical leadership on team members' in-role behavior and psychological capital. This study also predicts that management decoupling and personal decoupling will moderate the effect of ethical leadership negatively. A growing body on leadership research highlights the role of team leader's moral manager in team settings. Ethical leadership also becomes a salient issue in the situation of unethical decision making and misuse of management power which have done by unethical leaders all around the world. In order to identify the effect of ethical leadership, I collected data of 922 team members from bank, semiconductor manufacturer, and university hospital. Our findings show that ethical leaderships have a positive effect on team members' in-role behavior and psychological capital. In addition, I also found the significant moderation effect of management decoupling which team members perceive their top management team's inauthenticity. Contrary to the prediction, however, the result doesn't support the moderation effect of personal decoupling. I discussed implications of confirming and disconfirming findings in details.