Analyzing Factors Affecting Repurchase Intention During Gezi Park Brand Protests

Abstract

During the Gezi Park protests, some major brands were criticized within social media either for what they did or did not and social pressure to boycott those brands was highly apparent. Many newspaper articles highlighted that negative WOM during the protests might have affected consumers’ brand related knowledge. This notion is further supported by previous research. What happened during and after Gezi Park protests creates a perfect environment to analyze this effect. In addition, it was believed that only a portion of the consumers were highly affected by the protest calls. Consequently, this study aims to understand whether consumers have really changed their intention to buy from of a bank and a domestic coffee chain due to protest calls. The study also analyzes whether only a proportion of the consumers were affected and whether their trust, loyalty, awareness, perceived quality, and self-construal, and the company’s perceived social responsibility played a significant role in this change. A hierarchical logistic regression procedure (Forward Wald) with 357 usable cases was used with likelihood of change in purchase as the dependent variable. The results indicate that for the domestic coffee shop only perceived social responsibility plays a role in the change of consumers’ purchase intention. However, for the bank within the study, perceived social responsibility is found to be an insignificant contributor, whereas loyalty and awareness are found   to be significant contributors to consumers’ purchase decisions. Perceived quality/trust and consumers’ self-construal are found to have no effect on the change of consumers’ intention for both brands under study.

Keywords: Brand Communication, Boycott, Brand Loyalty, Purchase Intention