Search results

The disconnect between the corporate social responsibility (CSR) rhetoric and the practical reality experienced within companies calls for improved CSR evaluation systems that take into account the hypocrisy content of the firm's communication. The aim of this article is to contribute to the conceptual underpinning of a sincerity/hypocrisy index that positions an organization on a continuum from idealism to cynicism.

Starting with the analysis of the reasons for the dissonance between message and reality, the drivers of ethical corporate behavior, the intention of the actors and the intensity of effort and of corporate communication were analysed.

The analysis of the reasons for dissonance between message and reality sheds light on the role of communication in the perception of hypocrisy. An underlying model of a sincerity/hypocrisy index is proposed to position the firm on a continuum from idealism to hypocrisy in function of the degree of congruence or dissonance between communication and reality.

This concept of sincerity index could form a valuable basis for the development of new evaluation instruments for rating agencies, screening institutions and other evaluation bodies.

The instrument can help management to concentrate on the essence of CSR: the effective implementation of a corporate culture with attention for values and responsible business practices.

Why is social action politically so difficult to manage, especially in the field of health and above all when it concerns health care for immigrant populations? This article examines this question by analysing public policies concerning the situation of migrants living with HIV/Aids in France.

There is increasing interest in understanding negative consumer reactions to brands and the nature of negative brand perceptions. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize the construct of brand hypocrisy from a consumer perspective and develop a scale to measure it.

A multiphase scale development process involving 559 consumers was conducted. Study 1 pertains to item generation and reduction phases. Study 2 reports on scale purification and validation through confirmatory factor analyses and model comparisons. Study 3 focuses on discriminant and predictive validity, while Study 4 further investigates predictive validity using real brands with differences in brand hypocrisy.

A 12-item scale measuring four dimensions of brand hypocrisy is developed: image hypocrisy (brand failing to put words into action), mission hypocrisy (brand exerting an unacknowledged negative impact on society or consumer well-being), message hypocrisy (brand conveying unrealistic or unattainable images) and social hypocrisy (brand supporting social responsibility initiatives for strategic purposes only). Results indicate that brand hypocrisy is distinguishable from similar constructs in the literature and that it is a significant predictor of negative word-of-mouth and brand distance.

This conceptualization provides managers with a detailed understanding of what constitutes a hypocritical brand in the eyes of consumers as well as insights about how to prevent consumer perceptions of brand hypocrisy.

Findings enrich the understanding of negative consumer inferences related to brands and provide a conceptualization of an understudied but increasingly relevant form of brand judgment.

Luxury brands struggle to communicate their sustainability commitments to consumers due to the perceived incongruence between “luxury” and “sustainability”. This study aims to provide luxury brands with insights on how to engage consumers with different social value orientations (SVOs) to make sustainable luxury purchases in a compatible manner. It investigates the relationships between personal values (symbolism/universalism), SVOs (pro-self/prosocial orientation) and behavioral intentions toward sustainable luxury brands. It further explores whether these relationships may differ when consumers view themselves as individuals (salient personal identity is activated) versus group members (salient social identity is activated).

Study 1 (N = 419) used an online experiment in which participants were randomly assigned to either salient personal or social identity conditions to test the proposed model. Study 2 (N = 438) used a fictional brand to further validate the findings. Hypotheses were tested using covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) and multi-group SEM.

Results indicate that prosocial orientation significantly increases consumers’ behavioral intentions toward sustainable luxury brands. Interestingly, pro-self-orientation can also drive intentions to support sustainable luxury brands when consumers’ personal identity is salient. Salient social identity can further strengthen the relationship between prosocial orientation and sustainable luxury behavioral intentions.

This study presents a novel, inclusive definition of sustainable luxury brands and adds theoretical rigor to the SVO framework by revealing the moderating role of salient identities, contributing to the body of knowledge in luxury brand research.