Conspicuousness of Consumption Determines when Brands Benefit Most from Offering Ethical Attributes: An Abstract

Abstract

Consumers are increasingly demanding that organizations operate more responsively and offer more ethical products. Building on congruity theory, three experiments use real brands and an experimental framework to investigate the interactive effect of brand concept (i.e., symbolic vs. utilitarian) and ethical attribute type (i.e., symbolic vs. utilitarian) on brand evaluations. Experiment 1 demonstrates that congruity between a brand concept and an ethical attribute (e.g., a symbolic brand offering a symbolic ethical attribute) leads to enhanced consumer brand evaluations. However, incongruity between a brand concept and an ethical attribute (e.g., a symbolic brand providing a utilitarian ethical attribute) results in more negative brand evaluations compared to a congruent brand concept-ethical attribute pairing. Experiment 2 replicated these findings and supported the prediction that the positive effect of the congruity between brand concept and ethical attributes is mediated by perceived congruity. Experiment 3 shows that the positive effect of a symbolic ethical attribute paired with a symbolic brand emerges only when the brand consumption is perceived to be conspicuous. Evaluations of utilitarian brand concept-ethical attribute pairings were unaffected by the level of conspicuousness of brand consumption.