The role of betrayal in the response to value and performance brand crisis

Previous research on brand crisis has introduced the difference between a values-related crisis and a performance-related crisis. Across two experimental studies, we extend current research by demonstrating how self-brand connectedness increases people’s negative behavioural reactions when the brand is involved in a values-related crisis while it protects the brand when it is involved in a performance-related misdeed. We test these mechanisms introducing the mediating role of brand betrayal, the moderation of the personal relevance of the crisis domain (Study 1) and the moderation of the cause of the self-brand connectedness (Study 2). Our findings contribute to the literature by demonstrating that, through the mediation of perceived brand betrayal, a strong connectedness between the consumer and the brand may aggravate behavioural reactions to relevant misdeed in values-related domain especially when the cause of the strong relationship is induced by a central trait of consumer’s identity.