Sustainability & crisis management

: a valuable link to regain consumer trust and purchase intention : a case on Audi AG

Abstract

Throughout the past years, companies have increasingly faced performance-related crises due
to rising complexity of customer needs and external requirements. In light of these issues,
existing academic research has investigated the effectiveness of Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) in countering firm’s negative publicity. Yet, consumers tend to express
their scepticism towards organisational CSR efforts and accuse firms of green-washing.
Conversely to CSR, corporate sustainability initiatives are less likely to be perceived as greenwashing,
as they necessitate long-term investments and irreversible changes of business
processes. Hence, the aim of the present thesis is to examine the effectiveness of corporate
sustainability in countering negative publicity. More specifically, this paper evaluates whether
Audi’s sustainability strategy enables the firm to regain consumer trust and increase purchase
intention after the Diesel Emission Issue. Therefore, based on theoretical and practical
considerations, an online experimental study was conducted. Results show that presenting
individuals with information on firms’ initiatives associated with “Employees & Society” as
well as “Operations & Integrity” increase consumer trust levels. Moreover, Audi’s
sustainability strategy results in significantly higher levels of purchase intention. Hence, the
present dissertation contributes preliminarily research findings to a yet very limited stream of
research and holds important practical implications, especially for Audi AG, in terms of how
sustainability efforts can be effectively implemented as part of the crisis communication
strategy.

Date of Award	28 Jul 2017
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Bianca Soraya Soares Vilhena de Mendonça (Supervisor)