Abstract

Ethical attributes and social responsibility initiatives have become an important focus of attention ‎among marketing researchers and practitioners. My dissertation focuses on how consumers ‎respond to introducing product-related social responsibility initiatives/ethical attributes (i.e., ‎attributes that reflect concern about social and environmental issues; Luchs et al. 2010) for ‎different tiers of retailers’ private label brands (paper 1), brand attributes (paper 2), and brand ‎concepts (paper 3). In paper one, building on research in social responsibility and evolutionary ‎psychology, we introduce a conceptual model and opposing predictions to explore how social ‎responsibility initiatives can be integrated into different quality tiers (high vs. low) of retailers’ ‎private label brands (PLBs). The results of two experiments show that social responsibility ‎initiatives enhanced consumer evaluations of high-tier PLBs but hurt consumer evaluations of ‎low-tier PLBs. These findings were more consistent with an explanation based on resource ‎synergy beliefs rather than costly signaling theory. ‎
In paper two, we focus on other brand attributes that may affect offering ethical ‎attributes to PLBs and manufacturers’ national brands (NBs). Building on cue utilization theory ‎‎(Burnkrant, 1978; Jacoby, Olson, & Haddock 1971), the findings of this paper was twofold. ‎First, ethical attributes enhance PLB evaluations only in the presence of extrinsic cues signaling ‎high quality (i.e., high price or high retailer reputation), and this effect is mediated by consumers’ ‎product quality perceptions. Second, ethical attributes do not affect NB evaluations in the ‎presence of ethical attributes regardless of the extrinsic quality cues. ‎
In paper three, we shift our attention to the type of ethical attributes (i.e., symbolic vs. ‎utilitarian) and their congruity with the brand concept of symbolic national brands and utilitarian ‎private label brands. Three experiments show that a congruity between ethical attribute type and ‎brand concept (e.g., a symbolic ethical attribute for a symbolic NB) enhances consumer brand ‎evaluations whereas an incongruity between ethical attribute type and brand concept (e.g., a ‎symbolic ethical attribute for a utilitarian PLB) mitigates brand evaluations. This effect is ‎mediated by perceived congruity.‎