“The aftermath of a major scandal, can brands regain consumer trust?”

Abstract

Building on crisis management research, this study examines why brands in the food industry struggle to regain consumer trust after major trust violations. To achieve this it analyses the real-world case of Hamburgini, a popular fast food restaurant chain in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which suffered a major brand scandal following the food poisoning outbreak incident of April 2024, the crisis response strategies used by the brand and the factors that led to deepening of consumer mistrust and the widespread refusal by the affected customers to forgive the brand. A qualitative case study design is used to explore the factors that hinder efforts by brands to regain consumer trust after brand scandals that lead to reputational damage and loss of trust. A total of 16 in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted on 16 purposively selected study participants who were either former customers of Hamburgini before the incident or familiar with the brand scandal. The analysis of the qualitative data collected was conducted on Nvivo 12 using the reflexive thematic analysis technique. Results indicate severity and effects of a scandal, consumer expectations, brand awareness, and type of trust violation influence consumer forgiveness and trust; and that brands struggle to regain trust due to negative consumer perception of the adopted responses. This study contributes to the consumer trust repair discourse by offering an integrated understanding of the dynamics of consumer trust and the efficacy of different crisis response strategies, providing guidelines for effective crisis communication, and informing necessary changes in consumer protection regulations.