Brand social cause activism: the good, the bad and the ugly

Abstract

Brands increasingly take a stand on controversial social issues. Is it worth the risk to polarize consumers? To investigate this issue, this thesis conducts 2 studies, a five factor between-subject experiment followed by a social media field study. These studies are undertaken to understand what is the underlying process that explains consumers’ responses to social causes in general and to controversial social cause (CSC) advertising in particular. In addition, the studies provide insight into the effectiveness of controversial and non-controversial social cause (non-CSC) advertising, in terms of consumers’ responses, i.e., processing, attitudes, intensions and behaviors. I propose, test and find support for a conceptual framework in which moral emotions mediate consumers’ responses and the importance of a social cause moderates them. Moreover, CSC ads elicit divergent moral emotions: positive for cause supporters and negative for cause opposers. This investigation also identifies a duality of moral emotions associated with non-CSC ads. The results suggest that managers can use social cause ads (CSC and non-CSC) to boost ad attitudes, positive WOM and buycott behavior. However, only CSC advertising increases social media reach and engagement. Further, while reactions (emojis) and shares are predominantly positive, comments are predominantly negative. Negative comments can take two forms, depending on the cause and brand positioning they can be “against the cause” or displeased with the brand for “not doing enough” capturing consumers’ expectations. Overall, the results suggest that CSC opposers may not pose as great a threat to brands as is feared, because boycott intentions are lower than buycott intentions, and negative intentions do not always translate to actual behavior. Contrary to negativity bias, boycott is never greater than buycott, and under some circumstances buycott is greater than boycott behavior. Finally, the thesis uncovers and discusses a number of other theoretical and managerial implications