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This study aims to evaluate how brands communicate with consumers through the COVID-19 pandemic and how messaging has shifted over time. The authors identify a typology drawn from extant literature and use it to understand how brands shape consumers’ behavior.

Through a mix of interpretive and thematic analysis, the authors examine 858 US email advertisements and how these messages have evolved throughout the pandemic.

The authors findings demonstrate brand communication ranges from prosocial to brand messaging and brands employed different strategies at different phases of the pandemic. Specifically, while brands started out emphasizing socially desirable behavior before and directly after a national emergency was declared, COVID-19-related communications shifted to predominantly marketing-related messages later in the pandemic.

This study provides valuable insight into how brands adjust communication strategies through a prolonged cultural trauma and how these messages relate to authenticity, the triple bottom line and a social (versus branded) focus.

Prosocial advertisers widely use assertive messages to encourage prosocial attitudes and behaviors, but ironically, assertive messages may cause reactance. By applying cultural theories and the reciprocity principle, this study aims to observe whether consumers’ responses to assertive messages hold across culturally different audiences (Americans vs South Koreans) and different consumption situations (price discount vs no discount).

American and Korean participants take part in three experimental studies examining the interactions of nationality, price discounts and assertive messaging for influencing consumer responses, first to a prosocial ad encouraging recycling (Study 1), the second for a campaign requesting donations for disadvantaged children (Study 2) and the third to prosocial messages encouraging water conservation (Study 3).

The three experiments strongly support the moderating role of price discounts and cultural backgrounds in the persuasiveness of assertive prosocial messages. American consumers generally dislike assertive messages, but feel reciprocal obligations if marketers include price discounts, whereas South Korean consumers accept both assertive and nonassertive messages without resistance, and discounts have no effects on persuasion.

The findings make two key contributions to the literature and to prosocial advertising practices. First, although many corporations have adopted philanthropic strategies, few researchers have examined how specific consumption contexts determine the effectiveness of prosocial persuasion. The findings show how price discounts and message framing potentially alter the effectiveness of prosocial messages across Eastern and Western cultures. Second, assertive language evokes reactance, but the findings suggest that reactive responses to prosocial advertising are culture-specific.

International nonprofit organizations and brands using philanthropic strategies might use the guidelines of this study for tailoring strategic, practical prosocial messages that will appeal to consumers from diverse cultural backgrounds. In particular, pro-environmental and charity campaigns targeting North American or Western European populations may consider bundling discounts into promotions to evoke reciprocity.

Findings provide novel implications for social marketers regarding on how to couple message assertiveness and price discounts to maximize the success of prosocial messages in different cultures.

This paper aims to clarify the relationship between consumer accountability and responses to egoistic and altruistic appeals. It proposes that when consumers’ relationships with others are heightened in the form of accountability, different prosocial message appeals become effective. The study expands the understanding of how marketing may enhance the efficacy of prosocial campaign messages.

The study utilized three online experimental studies to test hypotheses across different population samples and health product categories. Self-benefit and other-benefit appeals were tested to decrease meat consumption (Study 1), increase vaccination intent (Study 2) and purchase oxybenzone-free sunscreen (Study 3). Results provide converging evidence for the proposed interaction between appeal type and accountability.

When consumers believe their choices will be known or discussed with others, they are more persuaded by other-benefit or altruistic appeals. Contrary to some existing research, Study 3 found that when public accountability was heightened, hybrid appeals were less effective than a solely altruistic appeal in generating purchase intent, digital engagement and attitude change, even controlling for social desirability.

Public accountability was manipulated only in an online setting, and future studies should replicate with greater ecological validity. Results inform how scholars, brands and organizations should approach message efficacy in prosocial campaigns, particularly when an individual’s relationship with others may become salient.

The paper includes implications for the development and deployment of various organizational strategies such as changing the appeal depending on where a message will be viewed by consumers. Importantly for digital campaigns, maximum digital engagement arises from an altruistic appeal in a public context.

This paper fulfills an identified need to understand how organizations can successfully encourage prosocial consumer behavior, as well as bridges literature gaps on accountability and appeal efficacy.

Social media have become an increasingly important venue for prosocial campaigns. Competing for the public’s attention in the digital space is an ongoing challenge. This study aims to test the influence of ad-context congruence, ad position and ad type (i.e. public service advertising [PSA] vs cause-related brand [CRB] advertising) on the effectiveness of prosocial native advertising on social media.

Two experiments were conducted on different social media platforms (i.e. Twitter and Instagram) with varied prosocial issues (i.e. healthy eating and environmental sustainability).

Experiment 1 indicated that the congruence between prosocial native ads and social media feeds elicited greater ad involvement and a more favorable ad attitude, regardless of ad position. Experiment 2 revealed that such an impact was contingent on whether the prosocial native ad was a public service ad or a CRB ad. The positive influence of ad-context congruence was pronounced among public service ads but was not observed among CRB ads. Perceived ad involvement mediated the interaction effects between ad-context congruence and ad type on ad attitude and behavioral intention.

The study extends ad-context congruence research to the context of prosocial native advertising on social media. Moreover, it identifies ad type as a boundary condition for the congruence effects and reveals that increased ad involvement is the mechanism underlying the positive effect of congruent PSA.

The purpose of this study is to invoke a consumer socialization approach to compare mothers and tween daughters on variables that may shape their clothing preferences and consumption behaviors. Additionally, this study explored the variables that predict how mothers and daughters respond to Pretty Brainy, an online clothing company that incorporates prosocial messaging into its product design and marketing.

Data were collected from 106 mother-daughter pairs using an online survey. In completing the survey, participants were instructed to view and evaluate the Pretty Brainy brand web site and clothing.

Mothers and daughters assigned similar degrees of importance to several clothing characteristics – including aesthetics/design, comfort, fit, use of socially responsible construction/production methods, and use of high performance technology – providing support for the consumer socialization model. Mothers and daughters were not similar on all clothing constructs explored, however, differing on the importance of some clothing characteristics examined (notably, brand name), as well as past socially responsible clothing purchase behavior, clothing involvement, and proximity of clothing to self. These differences may be explained in part by the mothers’ and daughters’ respective life stages. Among both mothers and daughters, attitude toward brand was the strongest predictor of purchase intention toward Pretty Brainy, which is consistent with established models of the attitude-intention relationship.

This study provides understanding about the influence of mothers upon tween girls’ clothing consumption behaviors, helping to clarify inconsistencies in prior work as well as lending new insights into the role of mothers in socializing their daughters with respect to socially responsible clothing consumption.

In recent years, neurophysiological tools have been vastly applied in sport marketing research. Eye tracking, a pervasive sensor technology, has received a growing interest to examine the effects of advertising through sport on viewer attention. While there is a plethora of evidence in advertising that supports the positive effects of various advertising types and locations on viewer attention in various sport contexts, little is known about the role of a prosocial overlay ad on viewer attention when watching televised football matches. Therefore, this research aims to examine the differences in viewers' attention (i.e. fixation and duration) with regard to game attractiveness and colors of the prosocial message during televised football matches.

To identify the research gap, the authors first reviewed the relevant sport marketing and neuroscience research on advertising effectiveness. The authors selected a prosocial message displayed. Adopting an experimental research design and using eye tracking, this study examined the impacts of game attractiveness and colors of message on viewer attention to the prosocial message displayed on an overlay advertisement during a football match.

The authors found that the colors of prosocial messages and game attractiveness had significant effects on viewer attention to the prosocial message.

In this study, the authors sought to add advertisement color, as well as game attractiveness, to the extant knowledge in marketing literature as effective advertising factors in capturing viewers' attention. These variables can offer marketers new insights in designing effective advertisements for the context of televised sports events in a specialized field.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of LEM participation on moral identity. Lateral exchange markets (LEMs) enable ordinary people to monetize idle personal resources such as cars, homes, gadgets and skills. Despite its champions portraying actors in these exchange as moral citizens of society, recent findings suggest that egoistic motives drive participation. A salient moral identity motivates behaviors that show social sensitivity to others and enable cooperative actions. Given that platform-providing firms rely on users’ cooperative behaviors to facilitate lateral exchange, understanding factors that affect moral identity can have important implications for the success of such business models.

In this research, the authors move away from the ideological discourse behind actors’ motivations, to provide a pragmatic explanation of how participation erodes moral identity. The authors apply a social cognitive framework to examine how the environment in LEMs impacts behaviors and personal factors in a recursive fashion.

Across two studies, findings reveal that prolonged participation in lateral exchange diminishes the centrality of moral identity to the working self-concept. Moreover, the results show that keeping puritan peers moral has positive business outcomes. This research also discerns a boundary condition that determines when peers remain consistent with their moral compasses. Specifically, when engagement is perceived as effortful, the behavior becomes an informative input in the inference of one’s moral disposition reinforcing moral identity.

Marketers can use this research to design business models in ways that mitigate the decay of moral identity.

The purpose of this paper is to explore consumers’ responses to prosocial marketing claims presented on apparel hang tags. Guided by the theory of reasoned of action, this study examined the impact of varied prosocial claims (environment, labor, cancer charity) upon college students’ evaluations of hang tags used to promote university-branded apparel (i.e. t-shirts) as well as their attitudes and patronage intentions toward the apparel.

An intercept survey approach, with an experimental design component, was used to administer a written questionnaire to 262 college students. The experimental design component required participants to examine a university-branded t-shirt and to read the information provided on the product hang tag attached to the t-shirt.

In total, 60 percent of college students read apparel hang tags on a very frequent or frequent basis to gain information about brand name, care instructions, and fiber content. Further, college students evaluated apparel hang tags featuring prosocial marketing claims more positively than they evaluated hang tags with no prosocial marketing claim. In turn, these evaluations positively predicted the amount of money students were willing to pay for a university-branded t-shirt as well as their attitudes and purchase intentions toward university-branded apparel.

Findings suggest that apparel companies engaged in socially responsible business practices may wish to develop hang tags that address both desired product attributes as well as company engagement in prosocial initiatives.

This study extends the understanding of the role that prosocial marketing claims play in informing consumer's attitudes and behaviors relative to apparel.

In the modern increasingly competitive milieu of cause marketing activities, both profit and nonprofit organizations expect their advocation of prosocial programs to gain the support of target customers. Previous research shows the effect from adding participant's personal attributes or social influence factors. This study considers the effects of benefit incentives and cost/reward influences to enhance prosocial behaviors.

Three between-subject experiments were conducted and SPSS Statistics ANOVA was employed to analyze the experimental results.

Rewarding time delays and prosocial efforts have no significant impact on the relationship between other-benefit incentives and willingness to engage in prosocial behaviors, but do significantly impact the self-benefit incentives condition. However, the negative effect of self-benefit condition can be mitigated by high rewards.

Since prosocial campaigns proposed by organizations in this study include both profit and nonprofit organizations, perhaps two category organization types should be attentively classified to evaluate the effects.

Under social marketing campaigns with self-benefit incentives conditions, the empirical findings of this study show that profit and nonprofit organizations can provide higher reward values to mitigate the adverse effects of high participating costs.

Social marketing campaigns with other-benefit incentives are less affected by high participating costs and highlight the value of altruism.

This study provides valuable suggestions for both profit and nonprofit organizations to use self-benefit/other-benefit incentives under cost related factors influence to encourage customers' prosocial behaviors.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of reconciliation and retaliation story endings on subsequent aggressive affect and behavior.

Participants took part in two ostensibly unrelated studies. The first involved reading a violent story, attributed to a biblical or secular source, which ended in either brutal retaliation or peaceful reconciliation. They then took part in a second study in which they completed measures of aggressive affect and behavior.

Participants told that their stories came from a secular source experienced a more aggressive affect than those told that their stories came from a biblical source. In terms of behavioral aggression, a significant difference in effect of the story ending on males and females emerged. Females who read the reconciliation ending had lower levels of behavioral aggression than females who read the retaliation ending. Conversely, males who read the reconciliation ending had higher levels of behavioral aggression than males who read the retaliation ending.

These findings suggest that media depictions of prosocial reactions to unprovoked aggression may not reduce aggression in men.

Results are discussed in terms of moral values espoused by women and men and suggest that anti-violence messages may be strengthened to the extent they address the values important to both.

This study extends research on violent media exposure to a burgeoning literature on reading violent content.