Exploring the Implications of Corporate Social Responsibility Assurance Messages in Cause-related Social Media Marketing

Objectives: This work investigates how different corporate social responsibility (CSR) assurance messages embedded in cause-related social media marketing influence consumers’ behavioral intentions (social media brand page joining and recommendation) and affective attitudes (likability of the campaign). CSR authenticity and CSR self-serving motives are also examined. Methods: An experiment was conducted using Facebook as the setting. Three treatments had identical descriptions of cause-related marketing (i.e., donating money to a recycling program) while controlling for internal versus external assurance messages. One-way ANOVA was used to measure effects on dependent variables (social media brand page joining, recommendations, and campaign likability). Regression was used to test CSR authenticity and self-serving motives. The sample was drawn from social media users in business classes at a mid-sized U.S. university. Results: A cause-related marketing campaign with CSR assurance messages generated more positive responses for all three dependent variables than the control condition. While the externally-sourced CSR assurance message significantly promoted behavioral intentions, the internal-audit CSR assurance message significantly increased likability of the campaign and perceived CSR authenticity. Unexpectedly, multiple-regression showed that CSR authenticity only was significantly associated with all three consumers’ responses. Conclusions: This study revealed that consumers are more likely to show positive behavioral intentions and affective attitudes when exposed to a cause-related social media campaign with CSR assurance messages compared to such a campaign without assurance. We can conclude that CSR assurance messages further increased positive responses from social media users toward cause-related marketing, emphasizing the importance of the post-review processes of CSR practices.