Talk is silver, silence is golden? Customer Reactions to Companies' Corporate Social Responsibility Communication Strategies

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Laura Marie Edinger-Schons
• Subject Area: Accounting and Finance
• Term: from 2015 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 273387524

During the last decade, the discourse relating to corporate social responsibility (CSR) has moved from whether firms should to be involved in CSR activities to how firms should to be involved (Du, Bhattacharya, and Sen 2007). Surprisingly, studies of CSR communication strategies still represent a major research void. The academic community has wide consensus that there is only embryonic marketing research on CSR communications (Maignan and Ferrell 2004, p. 17) and that thus an urgent need [exists] for both academicians and practitioners to get a deeper understanding of how to communicate CSR more effectively to stakeholders (Du, Bhattacharya, and Sen 2010, p. 17). What is needed is research that scrutinizes specific CSR communication strategies or tactics regarding their potential to stimulate positive customer responses. As Lindgreen and Swaen (2010, p. 1) point out: A systematic, interdisciplinary examination of CSR communication could offer an essential definition of the field of CSR communication which emphasizes the role of such communication and outlines key CSR communications tactics, such as what to say and then how to say it as well as different means to involve stakeholders in two-way communication processes. These three key issues (i.e., 1) the content of the message or what to say, 2) the framing of the message or how to say it, and 3) the strategy of involving customers in two-way communication processes) form the basic research themes of the proposed study. The study on hand intends to remedy these research gaps by developing conceptual models drawing on existing theories (e.g. theories of persuasion knowledge and perceived manipulative intent, attribution theory, social identity theory) and testing these models in a large-scale, longitudinal field-experiment in cooperation with a partner company. The results of the proposed study provide important contributions to theoretical research on customer reactions to CSR communication strategies and customer skepticism in general, as well as for CSR managers facing the challenge to design successful CSR communication strategies.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants