Abstract
In a context of corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication, we explore whether the use of expositive versus narrative discourses interacts with the type of service commercialized by the company (utilitarian vs. hedonic) to determine consumer perceptions and responses to corporate communication. Our main proposal is that, as representative examples of utilitarian services, banking companies would benefit significantly from communicating their CSR efforts with expositive discourses, whereas narrative discourses would be more adequate for hedonic services (e.g., catering). To test the research hypotheses, we use a 2 (expositive/narrative discourse) x 2 (utilitarian/hedonic service) between-subjects experimental design where we expose 302 consumers to different combinations of CSR messages and we evaluate changes in their message attributions and internal and external responses to them. The findings show that the interaction effect is significant and it works in the expected direction for issue importance, CSR fit, and CSR attributions. However, for CSR impact, attitude, trust, purchase, and advocacy intentions, the findings suggest that narrative discourses work better than expositive discourses both for utilitarian and hedonic services. No significant differences between types of discourses are observed for CSR motives, CSR commitment, and C-C identification and the interaction effect is also not significant for these variables.
Highlights
Since the 2008 Great Recession, increasing attention has been devoted to corporate social responsibility (CSR)
The research goal of the present paper is to explore whether the use of expositive versus narrative discourses interacts with the type of service to determine consumer perceptions and responses to CSR communication
Based on the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) [23] and the functional congruity and self-congruity types of message processing [15,18], we propose that an expositive discourse is especially adequate for communicating about the CSR of banking services, whereas narrative approaches would be more suitable for the CSR communication of catering services
Summary
Since the 2008 Great Recession, increasing attention has been devoted to corporate social responsibility (CSR). Has the international community realized the importance of achieving sustainable economic, social, and environmental development for stability and progress in the world economy [1], but CSR has become paramount for institutions and companies to recover credibility, trust, and reputation [2,3]. Studies frequently report that CSR awareness is typically low, while stakeholders demonstrate to be highly skeptical of the CSR motives behind companies that engage in CSR efforts [5]. These ideas highlight the necessity that companies have nowadays to design better communication strategies to reap strategic benefits from its CSR activities [4]. The way companies design their CSR communication strategies is crucial for the success of CSR and research should focus on this issue to provide companies with useful insight to design CSR and communication strategies more adequately
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