Effectively apologizing to consumers after a crisis: Psychological distance and abstractness/concreteness of an organization's apology

Abstract

Companies hit by a crisis of corporate misconduct typically need to issue a public apology to minimize reputational damage, negative word-of-mouth, and declining purchases. What such an apology should ideally convey, abstract or concrete information, remains up for debate. Working from construal-level theory, we test a contingency perspective on organizational apology effectiveness. According to construal-level theory, concretely formulated apologies are more effective when the apologizing company is psychologically near to (versus far away from) an apology-recipient. Second, abstractly formulated apologies are more effective when the apologizing company is psychologically far away from (versus near to) an apology-recipient. We found support for these hypotheses in three experiments (and provide a meta-analytic mean of both effects). In order to optimize effectiveness, apologies should be tailored to account for the psychological distance to the apology-recipient.