Doing well by buying goods is a message we send to each other, and ourselves.

By Aronté Bennett* and Amitav Chakravarti

Consumers frequently encounter, and buy, products that have a corporate responsibility (CR) association. Cell phones whose manufacturers donate a portion of proceeds to cancer research would be one example. It is well documented that products with a CR-association are extremely popular among consumers, and consumers are sometimes even be willing to pay a premium for these products. However, the research on CR-associated purchase decisions—such as a signature study detailed by Tom Brown and Peter Dacin in a 1997 issue of the  Journal of Marketing—has focused on antecedents that influence evaluations and purchase decisions. Less attention has been paid to the specific motivations that drive the decision to purchase a CR-associated product.

We have found several studies in which consumers express demand for CR-associated products for two distinct reasons. First, consumers like the fact that these products send out highly visible social signals regarding their benevolence. Second, consumers also like the more private self-signaling potential associated with the purchase of these products. In sum, it appears that the valuation of a CR-associated product is jointly determined by its social and self-signaling potential.

To put this all in context, let’s explore some brief descriptions of the supporting theory. Then we can quickly review specific studies and the corresponding results.

What’s a Signal?

Signaling refers to the act of conveying information about oneself in an implicit fashion, by engaging in behaviors that reveal one’s traits and preferences to observers. Amihai Glazer and Kai Konrad famously examined the role of social signals in the realm of charitable behavior in a 1996 article in The American Economic Review. Their model implies that charitable donations are observable signals, and consumers are more willing to donate when there is an increased potential for signaling. We apply this theory to CR-associated products, a specific type of charitable donation, and hypothesize that the evaluations of CR-associated products will be positively related to the social signaling potential of the product.

Besides sending out social signals to observers, behaviors also have the capacity to self-signal to the individual in question. George Quattrone and Amos Tversky demonstrated a generation ago, in a 1984 piece in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, that people often engage in behaviors in order to signal to themselves that they possess a particular desirable trait even with no social incentives.

Thus, we suggest that CR-associated products also allow for self-signaling.  These two hypotheses were investigated in the studies described below.

Self-satisfaction via social signals

In the three studies that we conducted, all participants were first presented with an advertisement for a target product, and then asked several follow up questions about the target product, which served as key dependent and process measures of interest to us. We manipulated the social and self-signaling potential of the target product by altering various elements of the ad copy.

In the first study, social signaling potential is manipulated by varying the visibility of the product via color and the CR-association was manipulated by the presence-absence of a CR affiliation. The second study replicates the first, replacing the social signaling manipulation with a more subtle manipulation of location of consumption (private vs. public). The third study considers the role of self-signaling; self-signaling potential is manipulated by the presence or absence of a reminder about how the purchase of the CR-associated product would remind participants of their benevolence.

Results across these studies indicate that products with greater social signaling potential derive more benefit from CR associations. Although evaluations in the low social signaling condition remained constant across CR conditions, evaluations of products with high social signaling potential increased significantly when CR associations were added. This difference further increased when a self-signaling reminder was added.

Our findings suggest that consumers generally reward CR-associated products that have the ability to serve as social signals. Interestingly, in order for self-signaling potential to influence the evaluations of CR-associated products, these products must also have social signaling potential.

Two more studies, which are currently in progress, are aimed at lending further credence to the fact that social and self-signaling play an important role in the purchase of CR-associated products. In a fourth study, using a design that parallels Tversky and Quattrone’s, we are investigating the potential for consumers to derive self-signaling benefits from the purchase of a CR-associated product, even when (a) explicit reminders about its self-signaling potential are absent, and (b) a strong social signal is not plausible. In a fifth study, we are looking at individual-level traits that should predispose people to differentially value the social (versus self) signaling potential of CR-associated products.

These five studies—using disparate manipulations and dependent measures—provide convergent findings. Those findings suggest that consumers will generally reward CR-associated products for their ability to serve as social signals and are willing to punish and devalue similar CR-associated products that do not offer the same signaling potential.

Interestingly, we find this preference even when the product’s social signaling potential is very subtly cued. Furthermore, if consumers are provided with explicit self-signals, the difference between high- and low social-signaling potential products is augmented.

In sum, we address a gap in the literature on corporate responsibility by showing that the valuation of a CR-associated product is jointly determined by its social and self-signaling potential. Our findings also extend the literature on signaling by offering an addition to the relatively modest extant stream of research related to self-signaling— especially in the consumer behavior domain.

Aronté Bennett and Amitav Chakravarti teach marketing at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business.