Consumer Perception of Corporate Value Endorsement

Sili Zhang and Andreas G. B. Ziegler

No 12909, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Do consumers naively reward corporate value endorsement? In an online market experiment, U.S. consumers reason about and buy from sellers who endorse values with varying strategic incentives and costs. Consumers reward value-endorsing sellers but discount strategically motivated endorsements; surprisingly, costly endorsements do not outperform cheap ones. Consumers' beliefs appear sophisticated: they anticipate pandering, understand selection, but also expect a larger strategic response when endorsement is costly. A rational-inference benchmark approximates observed willingness-to-pay for strategic sellers, indicating that consumers reward a calibrated probability of genuine alignment. Open-ended narratives reveal consumers' sophistication outside the experiment, where profit and genuine motives are both recognized. These findings help explain why cheap value appeals persist and suggest that the main friction is not consumer credulity, but limited responsiveness to the intensity of costly commitment.

Keywords: markets; value endorsement; strategic inference; sophistication (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 D12 D83 M14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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