The Role of Cause Involvement and Assortment Size on Decision Difficulty via Communal Relationships

Claire Heeryung Kim and Joonkyung Kim
Additional contact information
Claire Heeryung Kim: Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 1G5, Canada
Joonkyung Kim: Independent Researcher, Thornhill, ON L4J 8E8, Canada

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 23, 1-16

Abstract: Social enterprises aim to achieve both social and economic goals by reaching broader consumer segments through extensive assortments, but research into how this product proliferation strategy affects consumer response is scarce. In the current research we examine how consumers judge social enterprises providing large product assortments. Three experiments show that choice overload (i.e., having a decision difficulty when faced with many options) can be reversed among target consumers of social enterprises—specifically those whose involvement in a social cause is high. Because more-involved consumers view large assortments of cause-related products as an indicator of the company’s commitment to addressing social issues, they identify with the company and thereby form communal relationships. Thus, the consumers’ focus shifts from comparing options to helping the company, leading to reduced decision difficulty. The findings contribute to existing research on assortment size and the understanding of the information consumers use to evaluate the company’s commitment to social causes.

Keywords: social enterprise; decision difficulty; cause involvement; assortment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/23/13458/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/23/13458/ (text/html)

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:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:23:p:13458-:d:695548

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().