How and When does strategic CSR work? : Experimenting the Impact of Brand Equity and Persuasive Story on Consumer Response to Imitated CSR Initiatives

摘要

TOMS is a shoe company that gives away a pair for each pair you buy. In light of theirsuccess, the imitator BOBS entered offering similar shoe design and the same buy one giveone initiative. Corporate Social responsibility (CSR), by its definition, is a noble cause thatbenefits society, thus, one would expect consumers' response to BOBS would be equallyfavorable as they didi to TOMS. However, this was not the case (Jørgensen & Pedersen,2013). Intrigued by the story of TOMS vs BOBS we arrived to the following decisionproblem: How can companies that imitate CSR initiatives alleviate unfavorable responsefrom consumers? In order to operationalize this research question, two specific questionswere investigated: (1) Can brand equity alleviate consumers' unfavorable response to imitatedCSR initiatives, and (2) Can a persuasive story alleviate consumers' unfavorable response toimitated CSR initiative? These questions were addressed with a 2x2 factorial designexperiment where the dimensions were known brand/unknown brand and persuasive story/no persuasive story. The persuasive story yielded significant main effects on product attitudeand purchase intentions. However, simple effects analysis revealed that it was persuasivestory alongside the known brand that provided the significant results. The implication formanagers is that persuasive story with a strong brand can jointly bring forth more favorablyconsumer response to imitated CSR-products. Interestingly, the present study foundsignificant correlation between perceived sincerity of the company and perceived fit(between CSR initiative and the company), recognizing that this correlation may notnecessarily mean causation, future studies may consider investigation of the causal analysisbetween the two variables.