Riding the Wave: How and When Public Issue Salience Impacts Corporate Social Responsibility Advertising

Abstract

An increasing number of consumers expect brands to engage in important societal issues. Brands like Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, and Gillette have launched ads promoting their stances on highly salient issues in public discourse. While corporate social responsibility (CSR) advertising research has explored issues such as skin cancer, heart disease, and abortion, this research stream has yet to investigate how an issue’s salience in society influences consumer response. Because salient (versus nonsalient) issues make information more accessible and generate debate, the advertising context (i.e., public issue salience) may influence consumer response to CSR ads. Applying the salience theory of party competition to CSR advertising, this research shows how an issue’s consensus level and individual issue importance differentially impact brand attitudes and purchase intentions when an issue is salient. Through a series of four experiments with real ads, the present investigation shows how and when public issue salience affects marketing outcomes. This research adopts an issue-centric view and contributes to CSR advertising scholarship by (a) opening a new theoretical corridor, (b) demonstrating empirically how the advertising context (public issue salience) influences marketing outcomes, (c) providing a more holistic, comparative advertising perspective on issue selection, and (d) generating new insight into individual issue importance.

Acknowledgments

We are very grateful for the research support of Traci Van Dorselaer and the fall 2020 corporate social responsibility class. We would also like to thank Eric Haley and Annika Abell for providing helpful guidance on an early version of this manuscript.

Disclosure Statement

The authors do not have any conflicts of interest.

Notes

1 We use political theory to draw a conceptual a parallel to marketing. Applying political theory should not imply that all issues are politically divisive, as this research will show.

2 In the final study, we opted for purchase intentions as a dependent variable, in line with political science research which begins with attitudinal studies and eventually proceeds to measure voter intentions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tyler Milfeld

Tyler Milfeld (PhD, University of Tennessee, Knoxville) is an assistant professor of marketing, Department of Marketing and Business Law, Villanova School of Business, Villanova University.

Daniel J. Flint

Daniel J. Flint (PhD, University of Tennessee, Knoxville) is Regal professor of marketing, Department of Marketing, Haslam College of Business, University of Tennessee.

Alex R. Zablah

Alex R. Zablah (PhD, Georgia State University) is Gerber/Taylor professor of marketing, Department of Marketing, Haslam College of Business, University of Tennessee.