Consumer responses to corporate cause-related marketing

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to adopt the perspectives of cognition and emotions to investigate whether the interdependent self-construal of consumers in a Chinese collectivist culture, along with empathy and moral identity, evokes direct and indirect responses to corporate cause-related marketing (CRM). Design/methodology/approach A total of 901 valid questionnaires were retrieved, and PROCESS macro for SPSS was used to test the multiple mediation and serial mediation hypotheses. The structural equation modeling was also used to confirm the results. Findings The empirical results showed that consumer self-construal exerts a positive influence on consumer responses to corporate CRM through empathy. The results also suggest that CRM events provoke empathetic responses in consumers and trigger their moral identity, which in turn affects their evaluations on CRM corporations and their purchase intentions for CRM goods. Research limitations/implications The present study targeted the relatively affordable CRM events in convenience stores to investigate consumer responses; the results may not be applicable to CRM events in other industries. Besides that, as this study is focused on CRM activity, respondents may have more positive evaluation. Practical implications Corporations are advised to improve their corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication strategies. These should rely on factual, sincere, easy-to-understand and appropriate communication to trigger moral identity in consumers. Because empathy is regarded as the core of human moral and emotional systems, corporations are advised to associate their charitable events with social emotions to strengthen consumer perceptions, enhance moral identity and promote prosocial behaviors. Originality/value This study verified the serial multiple mediating effect of empathy and moral identity in the relationship between consumer self-construal and responses to corporate CRM. Corporations are advised to improve their CSR communication strategies and public expression of moral actions to raise consumer empathy and moral identity, so as to improve consumer responses to CRM.

Green Talk or Green Walk: Chinese Consumer Positive Word-of-Mouth to Corporate Environmental Actions in Polluting Industries

“…Next, participants were asked to report their positive WOM (α = 0.926) on a 5-item, 7-point Likert scale by Harrison-Walker (2001) [61]. They were also asked to fill in greenwashing perception (α = 0.915) scale with 5 items adopted from Chen and Chang (2013) [62], and complete other-condemning emotions scale (α = 0.989) with 9 items borrowed from Xie et al (2015) [16]. Then, we adopted two items from Leonidou and Skarmeas [63,64] to measure the consumers' environmental attitudes (α = 0.780), which treated as a control variable.…”

“…Additionally, according to the social intuitionist model, moral emotions seem to be more automatic and generic compared with cognitive reactions [52,54]. Xie et al (2015) indicated that moral emotions are combinations of inherited and learned responses to social cues violating one's moral sensitivities [16]. For simplicity of exposition, moral emotions are likely to trigger moral judgement of specific events and play a leading role in intuitive process of moral judgement, which influence consumer responses.…”

“…The social intuitionist model proposed by Hadit spurs scholars to pay more attention to the role of moral emotions, and helps call into question the predominance of rational cognition in the study of moral judgement for a long time. Therefore, this section aims to investigate the mediating role of the other-condemning emotion in the relationship between corporate environmental actions and consumer positive WOM to underline the "hot" emotional process in corporate environmental issues [15,16,19].…”

“…Accordingly, many scholars have called for more research on "hot" emotional processes [15]. Although extensive research into moral emotions involving corporate social responsibility (CSR) has provided us with considerable insights [16,17], the focus of moral emotions in more detail, namely, corporate environmental issues, is still somewhat scarce. By this logic, the present research mainly examines the role of other-condemning emotions.…”

Reexamining Consumers’ Cognition and Evaluation of Corporate Social Responsibility via a DANP and IPA Method

“…In the research and survey conducted in Hong Kong by Welford et al [86], three CSR topics (environment, health and safety, and governance) out of 15 are seen as the most important, while philanthropic topics are the least important. However, some companies have currently started to carry out genuine prosocial and philanthropic activities (refer to [87,88]), as we expected.…”