The effects of language choice and crisis response strategies in crisis messages on consumers’ perceptions of organizational reputation, perceived crisis responsibility, emotionality, anger and attitudes towards crisis messages in Germany.

Abstract

The study aimed to examine effects of organisational crisis communication and language choice from a German context. Effects of crisis response strategies (diminish vs. rebuild) in crisis messages on German consumer's perceptions of organizational reputation,perceived crisis responsibility, emotionality, anger, and attitudes towards crisis messages in Germany were investigated. Additionally, the study incorporated language choice as a new factor into crisis communication research by testing potential effects of language choice (German as L1 vs. English as L2) on German consumers’ perceptions of organizational reputation, perceived crisis responsibility, emotionality, anger, and attitudes towards crisis messages. In total, 115 German participants took part in the experiment for the present study (all German native speakers). The main results revealed that, overall, the combination of crisis response strategies and language choice of crisis messages rather than each of the two independent variables alone yielded nuanced effects on German consumers.