This paper examines the changing understandingof corporate social responsibility (CSR) by looking atthree aspects: the growing public demands regardingcorporate behaviour, the role of government in“promoting” or “requesting” the socially responsiblecorporate behaviour, and the attempts of business todeal with changing demands.
Today, consumers expect companies to be socially responsible. However, the literature is undecided about the effects of communicating one's corporate social responsibility activities to consumers. This raises the question of how sustainability-driven companies can best advertise their products to stimulate ethical consumption: using self-benefit frames, where the main beneficiary is the consumer, or using other-benefit frames, where the main beneficiary is a third party. Using three experiments, this study examines the effect of other-benefit (vs. self-benefit) advertising frames on consumers' impulse purchases from sustainability-driven companies. Increasing impulse purchases can help such companies to strengthen their competitive positions. Additionally, it is studied to what extent two types of justification (moral versus deservingness) explain the proposed effect of advertising frames. The results show that only other-benefit frames affect impulse buying behavior, both directly, as mediated by moral justification. This study's insights may help sustainability-driven companies to decide on their advertising strategies by providing evidence that other-benefit-framed advertisements are more effective in enhancing impulse purchases than self-benefit-framed advertisements.
New social actors have emerged with the social media. Among them, we highlightedthe digital influencers, people who have millions of online followers, andinduce them in favor or against products and brands to be consumed. Therefore,we aimed to analyze this endorsement process carried out by digital influencers intheir online profiles, having as research field the fitness market that encouragespeople to evaluate and work tirelessly in their bodies. We used the Semiotic ImageAnalysis to investigate the postings of three Brazilian digital fitness influencersand identified four categories that configure the post format: body exposure, bodyextension, interaction between influencer and brand/product, and interaction betweeninfluencer and followers. By means of these categories, we identified thatthese influencers act as brand avatars, creating an intense link with these products,exposing their bodies in advertisements and extending the meanings of theirgood shape to endorsed goods and services.
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