Should I stay or should I go

: an experimental study on corporate responses to the war in Ukraine with portuguese consumers

Abstract

The war in Ukraine entails a challenge for businesses to make choices regarding theirpositioning and alignment. Therefore, it is relevant to address the impact of these decisions on how the company is perceived. This thesis aims to show how corporate responses to the war in Ukraine impact Portuguese consumers’ perceptions. In an experimental quantitative survey,Portuguese consumers read two, out of a total of 18, descriptions of fictitious companies’responses to the war in Ukraine and then reported their evaluations. The results of the research revealed that consumers attributed more positive opinions to companies that left Russia than to those that stayed. Additionally, companies that donated to Ukraine, either humanitarian or military goods, also obtained better evaluations than those that did not donate. Taken together, these findings indicate that consumers are extremely sensitive to companies’ positioning. Therefore, organizations should cautiously handle events that imply the need to take decisions about the business’s positioning and alignment. To do so, companies must attend to and integrate their values; having in mind, there is no business sustainability without the definition of a clear value system (Tidwell, 2016).

Date of Award	3 Feb 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Sérgio Paulo Moreira (Supervisor)