与单一品牌危机相比，多品牌危机对个体品牌和品牌群组都具有更加深远的影响，对其进行深入研究具有重大的现实意义。但以往文献对多品牌危机如何影响品牌群组以及危机品牌群组如何从伤害中恢复的探讨还很缺乏，本研究拟通过引入替罪羊效应这一概念来弥补该研究缺口。 依据消费者行为、品牌信任、危机管理等多理论，采用定性与定量研究相结合的方法，通过对消费者和品牌经理进行深度访谈，深入理解他们在多品牌危机中的态度和行为变化；在此基础上设计多情景实验，验证研究假设，进而揭示替罪羊效应产生的作用机制及影响；最后结合多方面真实的市场数据，在验证多品牌危机对品牌市场表现的影响的基础上，提供有针对性的和可行的营销思路及解决方案。理论上，本研究不仅将视角从个体品牌拓展到品牌群组，还首次将替罪羊效应引入营销领域并探讨其作用机制。实践上，本研究将通过深入探讨多品牌危机中的替罪羊效应及作用机制，探寻一条走出危机，重获信心之路。

Since the 2008 melamine crisis, more and more product-harm crises broke involving multiple brands. Compared with single-brand crisis, multi-brand crisis has broader and deeper influence on both individual brands and brand categories. Despite its importance, little research has been done previously in investigating how multi-brand crisis influences related brand categories, and if there's any factor that could help these categories in trust recovery, since most researches in the previous literature focus on single-brand crisis. The current research aims to make up this research gap, by introducing the concept of the concept of scapegoating effect. Specifically speaking, in this research, we try to discuss in the field of product-harm crisis deeply about the spillover of negative information from multiple crisis brands to related brand categories, and about the scapegoating effect in trust recovery of brand categories that are negatively affected by multi-brand crisis. To conclude, we are going to address two questions in this research: (1) What influence would multi-brand crisis have on the crisis brand category and other competing brand categories? (2) Could the existence of a scapegoat brand help in trust recovery of the crisis brand category, that is, whether the scapegoating effect exists in multi-brand crisis? In this research, we would firstly conduct in-depth interviews with consumers and brand managers regarding multi-brand crisis, to get initial understandings of their thoughts and behaviors facing such crises. And then multi- experimental studies would be conducted to test our hypotheses. In the last step, we would collect field marketing data and apply statistical methods to analyzing the big data to test the influence of multi-brand crisis on brands' market performance. Theoretically speaking, our research will make up the research gap regarding multi-brand crisis and contributes to the existing marketing literature on the following two aspects. Firstly, in this research, we will investigate the different influences of multi-brand crisis on the crisis brand category and the competing brand category. Second, we will explore the scapegoating effect in multi-brand crisis and its mechanism for the first time. Practically, this research will have implications on both individual brands and industrial regulators. For individual brands, our results suggest that it's better not to be the scapegoat. However, it's quite hard for individual brands to control which brand to be the scapegoat. Therefore what they could do is to do things right. No mistakes means no punishments. For industrial regulators, when multi-brand crisis happens, we suggest they take actions quickly. The sooner they punish brands that have made mistakes, the sooner consumers would get back into the market.