Dear Faculty and Fellow Ph.D. Students,

I cordially invite you to attend my dissertation proposal scheduled for Friday, July 14th at 9:00 AM (EST) in Room 201, Scheller College of Business.

You are also welcome to join remotely via the following Zoom link: https://gatech.zoom.us/j/93352968828

The abstract is included below, and copies of the proposal are available upon request.

Area: Marketing

Committee Members: Dr. Ajay Kohli (Co-chair), Dr. Tracey Swartz (Co-chair), Dr. Michael Lowe, Dr. Koushyar Rajavi and Dr. Colleen Harmeling (Florida State University)

Title: How You Respond to a Crisis Matters

Abstract: Crises are increasingly prevalent in today's marketplace. Brands experience crises, such as product failures, service failures, and unfair labor practices. In this dissertation, I investigate how consumers and investors respond to firms’ strategies addressing such crises. In the first essay, I use secondary data and a series of experiments to examine the impact of a firm’s denial of responsibility in response to a brand crisis on sales on consumers’ attitudes towards the brand. Preliminary findings from experiments suggest that denial of responsibility by a firm for a crisis has an adverse effect on consumers’ attitudes towards the brand. I also find that these effects are stronger for brands with a strong track record in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and product quality. In the second essay, I explore how firms benefit from proactively initiating recalls depending on the type of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative implemented. I posit that firms engaging in philanthropic CSR activities signal efficient allocation of resources, thus leading to a greater reward for recall proactivity. Conversely, firms focusing on employee and environmental CSR initiatives, which are oriented more towards generating profits, receive a relatively smaller reward for proactive recalls from investors.