Someone Else to Blame: The Effectiveness of Egocentric and Alter-Centric Impression Management Tactics in the U.S. Food Retail Industry
研究了企业面对负面属性时，采用以自我为中心（否认自身问题）和以他人为中心（指责竞争对手）两种印象管理策略的效果，发现策略有效性取决于消费者对行业属性的默认预期和怀疑风险，基于美国食品零售业2006-2015年的营养标签数据验证。
We investigate the effectiveness of two types of impression management tactics implemented around negative attributes: egocentric (claiming the absence or low presence of a negative attribute in a focal organization) and alter-centric tactics (claiming the greater presence of a negative attribute in an organization’s competitor). We claim that the effectiveness of each tactic depends on the risk of audiences’ skepticism, which stems from the incongruence between the information conveyed in the tactic and audiences’ default expectations about the presence of the attribute among members of a given market segment. Audiences expect a conspicuous presence of the attribute, we propose, the more stakeholders contest a market segment for that very attribute. Thus, we advance that egocentric (alter-centric) tactics are less likely to be effective for contested (uncontested) attributes because the information conveyed in such tactics clashes with audiences’ default expectations, triggering skepticism. We find support for our predictions looking at the impact of nutrient content claims on product sales in the U.S. food retail industry between 2006 and 2015. Funding: H. Pinto de Sousa acknowledges the support, in the form of a research scholarship, granted by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia), under the European Social Fund and the Human Capital Operational Program (Programa Operacional Capital Humano) funding program [Grant SFRH/BD/128536/2017]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.1612 .