A “good” new brand — What happens when new brands try to stand out through corporate social responsibility

Stefanie Robinson and Stacy Wood

Journal of Business Research, 2018, vol. 92, issue C, 231-241

Abstract: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is increasingly used as a key part of a firm's branding strategy, especially for new brands hoping to stand out in mature markets. Unfortunately, data here demonstrate that new product trial is lower when new brands tout CSR activity than when they do not. To understand this surprising phenomenon, we find CSR has a negative effect on new brands' perceived product performance. Happily, we find a fix for new brands; negative effects for new brands can be reversed if the company explicitly signals a priority for both the product and its CSR endeavors. Importantly, we do not see a similar negative impact of CSR on established brands.

Keywords: New brands; Corporate social responsibility; Sustainability; Consumer inference making (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296318303503
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:92:y:2018:i:c:p:231-241

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.07.031

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
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().