Social Responsibility Effects on Consumption

This dissertation consists of two essays that examine the role of socially responsible brand behaviour (e.g., cause-related marketing, environmentally friendly products) on consumer evaluations at the brand and the product level. The first essay investigates when and how the expectancy of a CSR (corporate social responsibility) activity—the extent to which the CSR activity deviates from consumers’ mental schema regarding brands’ CSR activities—influences brand evaluations. Results from four experiments show that unexpected CSR activities improve brand evaluations when there is a brand-based link between the CSR activity and the brand (high CSR fit), but hurt brand evaluations when there is no clear link between the brand and the CSR activity (low CSR fit). These results are driven by the favourability of the elaborations regarding the brand’s CSR activity. Furthermore, unexpected CSR activities with high brand-CSR fit are more effective in improving brand evaluations of low-involvement consumers. This essay demonstrates the distinct role of CSR expectancy in influencing brand evaluations. The second essay focuses on socially responsible brand behaviour at the product level and explores how using environmentally friendly products (e.g., a pen or a pair of headphones) influences consumers’ enjoyment of accompanying consumption experiences (e.g., writing a letter or listening to music), even if they have not chosen or purchased the product. A series of five experiments in actual consumption settings suggest that using environmentally friendly (vs. conventional) products enhances the enjoyment of accompanying consumption experience and that feelings of warm glow drive this effect. For those consumers who believe that environmental attributes come at the expense of functional product attributes or are futile in helping the environment, the benefits on consumption experience disappears. This essay advances our understanding of how environmentally friendly products influence the actual consumption experience and yields important implications for managers