Investigating the Motivational Processes Underlying Bicultural Consumer Response to Cultural Product Cues

This research investigates how affiliation with a corporate parent affects consumers’ perception of corporate societal marketing (CSM). It also examines whether this effect is more pronounced when the affiliation is perceived to be hidden, and therefore in violation of the norm of openness. Lastly, the study examines whether any of the effects flow back to the parent company. Findings include that corporate parent affiliation does not necessarily lead to decreased evaluations of the niche marketer brands. However, when consumers see the affiliation as hidden, evaluations are negatively affected. Evidence suggests effects may depend on prior track record of parent firm. Conceptualization Corporate societal marketing is an increasingly popular method of building brand equity (Hoeffler and Keller 2002). Some niche brands have been successfully built by firms appealing to socially concerned consumers. Several such firms have been acquired by larger firms. Examples of this phenomenon are reviewed and discussed. In each case, a large firm acquired a smaller firm and continued to operate the brand unchanged. This strategy seems to assume that consumers will continue to value the brand based upon its CSM characteristics. It is possible, however, that consumers devalue the brand upon learning of such an affiliation, especially if the parent brand is perceived to lack similar commitment to the cause. The purpose of this paper is to examine how consumers evaluate CSM based brands of a niche marketer affiliated with a larger firm. The study is informed by three principle areas of theory: 1) corporate societal marketing, 2) the correspondence bias in attribution theory, and 3) fairness in marketing. The correspondence bias refers to the attributional bias in which people make judgments about others based upon their behavior, even in the presence of situational constraints that offer alternative explanations. Fein, Hilton, and Miller (1990) found that the presence of ulterior motives acts as an antidote to the correspondence bias. When behavior may be motivated by an ulterior motive, observers become suspicious, and are therefore less inclined to make attributions based on that behavior. In the present research, it is expected that upon learning of the affiliation, the ulterior motive of image management, or of the profit motive, will become accessible as a ulterior motive for the CSM activities, causing consumers to lower their evaluations of the firm and brand. Fairness is an important component of exchange (Oliver and Swan 1989; Campbell 1999). Ashworth and Darke (2006) found that consumers’ perceptions of fairness are affected by violations of prescriptive norms–such as openness–even when the outcomes of the exchange were perceived to be distributively fair. Consumers expect to be treated fairly in the marketplace, not only because of material concerns, but also as a matter of principle. In the present research, it is expected that consumers’ perception of openness will affect their evaluation of the companies and their brands. Corporate Societal Marketing (CSM) has been defined by Drumwright and Murphy (2001) as marketing initiatives that have at least one non-economic objective related to social welfare and use the resources of the company and/or one of its partners. There is evidence that consumers’ evaluation of CSM efforts depend partly upon their perceptions of the marketers’ motivations or intentions. It is expected that consumers will find it more credible that a niche focused firm is sincerely motivated by social objectives than is a larger, more diversified firm.