Engaging Consumers Through Corporate Social Responsibility Messages on Social Media: an Experimental Study

Abstract

Strategically managed Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) communication is an essential tool for organizations to achieve dialogic and participatory communication with their stakeholders. This study aims to investigate whether CSR related social media, particularly Twitter, messages regarding distinct categories (i.e. economic and ethical) and areas (i.e. product and community relations) would have different impacts on consumer attitudinal and behavioural outcomes such as attitude towards the brand, engagement intention, word-of-mouth intention, and purchase intention. Following this aim, the research is conducted in two stages including exploratory and experimental phases. The results show that while CSR related Twitter messages on product/economic & ethical category have a higher impact on consumers purchase intention than messages on product/purely economic category, messages on economic & ethical area have a higher impact on consumer engagement than messages on purely ethical category.