Consumer responses to corporate social responsibility communication from stigmatized industries: E-cigarettes and consumers’ use of persuasion knowledge

ABSTRACT

Drawing upon JUUL’s CSR campaign cases that were intended to rebuild people’s trust during its vaping crisis, this study examined the effects of the e-cigarette company’s CSR and CA messages on consumers’ responses. Applying the Persuasion Knowledge Model, this study also investigated how consumers’ existing beliefs about the e-cigarette industry (i.e., topic knowledge) and specific e-cigarette companies (i.e., agent knowledge) influenced their evaluation of CSR and CA messages. An online experiment (N = 275) showed that CSR messages were more likely to generate positive consumer attitudes toward the company and product, as compared to CA messages. These effects were mediated by consumers’ persuasion knowledge activation and moderated by consumers’ perceptions of the industry and perceived corporate legitimacy.

KEYWORDS:

• e-cigarettes
• CSR
• persuasion knowledge
• topic knowledge
• agent knowledge

Disclosure statement

There are no relevant financial or non-financial competing interests to report.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maral Abdollahi

Maral Abdollahi is a Ph.D. candidate at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. Her primary research area is influencer marketing, consumer affect, consumer skepticism, and computational advertising.

Hao Xu

Hao Xu is a Ph.D. candidate at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota and an incoming lecturer at the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate social advocacy, and crisis communication.

Hyejoon Rim

Hyejoon Rim is an associate professor at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. Her primary research area is corporate social responsibility (CSR), consumer skepticism, and crisis communication.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

The study involved human participants. Informed consent was obtained from all participants for being included in the study.

The study was granted exemption by the University of Minnesota’s Institutional Review Board (IRB). This study was approved under Expedited Category: (7) Research on individual or group characteristics or behavior or research employing survey, interview, oral history, focus group, program evaluation, human factors evaluation, or quality assurance methodologies.

All procedures performed in the study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the IRB and with the ethical standards as laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.