 Recipient-brand value misalignment: How corporate sociopolitical activism reshapes gift giving decisionsLin Zhao, Julian Givi and Annie Peng Cui Journal of Business Research, 2025, vol. 199, issue C Abstract: Corporate sociopolitical activism literature demonstrates that consumers often choose brands whose sociopolitical values are aligned (vs. misaligned) with their own. Yet, limited research has investigated consumer decision making in the context of corporate sociopolitical activism when the choices are gifting decisions. Our work addresses this gap. We find that givers are more likely to select brands with values that align (vs. misalign) with their own when recipients also share these values. However, this preference attenuates when the recipient’s values conflict with the brand’s. We further show that brand-self distance explains this attenuation. Givers perceive there to be less brand-self distance when their views are aligned (vs. misaligned) with a brand’s. However, brand-self distance is a weaker predictor of a giver’s brand choice when the recipient’s values are misaligned (vs. aligned) with the brand’s. We discuss our contributions to research on brand activism, gift-giving, and goal conflict. Keywords: Corporate sociopolitical activism; Gift-giving; Brand-self distance; Consumer choice; Gift givers; Gift recipients (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:199:y:2025:i:c:s0148296325003467 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115523 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier |
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