PurposeThe main goal of this paper is to provide an integrative understanding of corporate social responsibility (CSR) from a corporate marketing perspective, highlighting the critical role of CSR in effective corporate marketing strategies.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is conceptual and draws on the social identification, organisational identity and corporate marketing literatures from the European and US schools of thought.FindingsThe paper integrates and builds on extant thinking in corporate marketing and CSR to provide an identity‐based conceptualization of CSR. Based on this, it positions CSR as an optimal managerial tool for promoting alignment between multiple corporate identities (e.g. internal, external), which ultimately leads to key benefits for the company.Originality/valueThe paper is the first to highlight the unique role of CSR in being able to align multiple corporate identities. Furthermore, the paper threads together diverse perspectives on corporate identity and marketing to highlight the potential role of CSR in effective corporate marketing.

While companies contribute in different ways to the corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues they support, little is known about the effects of varying CSR contribution types on consumers' evaluations of the contributing company. This paper examines consumer reactions to two basic contribution typesmoney versus in-kindin the CSR domain of disaster relief to demonstrate, through five studies, that while consumers evaluate a company more favorably when it makes in-kind rather than monetary contributions of equivalent value to CSR issues that are perceived to be less controllable, the pattern reverses when the company's contributions are made to CSR issues that are perceived to be more controllable. This interaction between contribution type and perceived issue controllability is more likely to manifest when controllability is accessible in the minds of consumers. The underlying process is driven by the extent to which the disparate emotionality of each contribution type matches the intensity of felt emotion evoked by CSR issues of varying perceived controllability, producing processing fluency.

While prior literature has often conceptualized Eastern consumers as archetypes of resolute discipline and self___control, the authors of this manuscript demonstrate that holistic thinking (a well___established characteristic of Eastern culture) can pose a liability to consumers___ self___control efforts by increasing their desire for indulgent foods under certain conditions. Specifically, this research reveals that when an indulgent food is advertised with a cue that sets the occasion for consumption (i.e., an occasion___setting cue), holistic (vs. analytic) thinking increases craving and subsequent purchase likelihood for the featured product. Evidence for this effect is found across three studies using both self___reported and physiological measures of craving. Furthermore, the effect holds regardless of whether holistic thinking is measured or manipulated. Finally, this research provides evidence for the underlying mechanism and establishes important boundary conditions for the interactive effect.

Purpose While the popularity of online shopping has increased in recent years, surprisingly little research has examined the factors affecting consumers’ behavior in this context. Furthermore, though a widespread problem for companies, the phenomenon of online shopping cart abandonment has garnered even less attention. The purpose of this study is to examine the role of consumers’ mindsets in online shopping cart abandonment. Design/methodology/approach Three experimental studies were conducted to examine the effect of consumer mindsets (i.e. abstract vs concrete) on purchase intentions. Findings Results indicate that consumers who have an abstract (as opposed to concrete) mindset when shopping online rate the products they include in their shopping carts to be more important, and consequently are more likely to purchase them, reducing shopping cart abandonment. Practical implications The findings suggest that online retailers can reduce shopping cart abandonment by implementing strategies that allow consumers to think abstractly. Originality/value This research contributes to the literature by identifying an important underlying mechanism affecting online shopping cart abandonment.

This article examines how and why members of a stigmatized minority group respond to in-group and out-group influences in their consumption decisions. Specifically, the authors demonstrate through a field survey that gay men are more [less] likely, compared with their straight counterparts, to conform to influences from in-group [out-group] members. Moreover, the authors show that these patterns are driven by differences across these two groups in both their horizontal and vertical collectivism values. In doing so, this article provides evidence of the influence of coping with continual threats to identity (as are faced by stigmatized minorities) on gay men's cultural values and explores these driving role of these values in gay men's susceptibility to influences from in-and out-groups that go beyond those based on majority-minority status.

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Consumer-Company Identification is a relatively new issue in the marketing academia. Bhattacharya and Sen (2003) explored the Social Identity theory and established Consumer-Company Identification as the primary psychological substrate for deep relationships between the organization and its customers. In the present study a new instrument was constructed and validated that permits the empirical verification of the phenomenon described by Bhattacharya and Sen (2003). The scale validated in the present study is the first to embrace the idiosyncrasies of the identification between consumers and organizations. The process was conducted through 3 independent data collections. The first one was collected using literature search and in-depth interviews with 12 undergraduate students and bachelors from different professional fields. The second data base was obtained from a survey of 226 undergraduate students from 3 universities in 2 big Brazilian cities. This data base was used for purification purposes using Explanatory Factorial Analysis. Finally, the Structural Equation Modeling technique was applied to analyze a third data base composed of 387 observations collected from the same 3 universities of the second study. The results confirm the content, convergent and discriminant validity of the new scale proposed.

Surprisingly, little research has examined how consumer responses to specific flavor characteristics of food are formed or how they may fluctuate situationally. We address this lacuna in the literature on the hedonic appreciation of food by demonstrating that enjoyment along one important gustatory dimension, flavor complexity, varies with the degree to which consumers are mentally depleted. Specifically, showing that gustatory sensations are more cognitively demanding than previously thought, findings from three studies evince that cognitive depletion reduces consumer enjoyment of complex‐flavored (but not simple‐flavored) foods via a reduction in pleasure that otherwise can be derived from complex flavors. We establish this effect across three different food categories and provide preliminary evidence for consumers’ ability to identify flavors as the underlying process. Our findings offer theoretical contributions and avenues for future research.