Previous research has demonstrated the role of CSR in routine consumer behavior settings. The present research seeks to extend those findings by suggesting an alternative role for CSR in a nonroutine setting. The results show that CSR associations have a strong and direct impact on consumers' attributions, which in turn translate into blame for the incident that consequently influences brand evaluations and purchase intentions. Furthermore, while CSR appears to influence brand evaluations directly, its impact through attributions appears to be pronounced only for those consumers who report considering a company's CSR as important to their decisions. These results point to important theoretical and managerial implications.
That CSR associations in fact have a direct and relatively strong impact on consumer judgments in a nonproduct evaluation context suggests a new and interesting role for this construct. The findings suggest that CSR associations may have a significant impact when consumers rely on corporate associations to inform their judgments. The mediating role of attributions is important in these circumstances, because situations that are deemed out of the ordinary elicit spontaneous attributional activity. These attributions, we show, are strongly affected by consumers' prior perceptions of CSR. In turn, these attributions contribute to an ascription of blame that affects brand evaluations, which then have an impact on purchase intentions. Thus, attributions and the consequent ascription of blame may have an enduring impact on consumer behavior by altering brand evaluations.
These results indicate that in addition to the effects of CSR on firm performance through improved consumer brand evaluations and greater likelihood of purchase in routine consumer behavior situations, CSR may have a ‘dormant’ effect that is activated in circumstances in which consumers rely on corporate associations to inform their judgments. Thus, our research suggests that even if positive CSR associations do not increase immediate profitability, they may be instrumental in reducing the risk of damage to brand evaluations in the event of a calamity. This permits a potentially novel conceptualization of the impact of CSR: CSR is like an insurance policy that is there when you need it.
Furthermore, the findings in Study 1 suggest a valence-based asymmetry in that a negative corporate CSR image has a larger impact on attributions than a positive CSR image. This suggests that a poor record on social responsibility can be asymmetrically damaging relative to the credit a firm receives for a good record. We find that a negative CSR image leads to unflattering attributions and blame while a positive image led to attributions similar to those made by control subjects who had no prior impression of the firm. One interpretation of this finding is that consumers are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to firms about which they know little, but that evidence of poor CSR places the firm in a pejorative position. The implication is that while a neutral image might provide as much protection in a product crisis as a positive image, a negative image will be a powerful liability to a firm facing such a crisis. The findings complement those of Dawar and Pillutla (2000) on product–harm crises, as well as those of Sen and Bhattacharya (2001) on CSR. Although, the Dawar and Pillutla (2000) research did not examine CSR, they found that companies about which consumers had weak prior expectations based on accumulated experience with the company, were barely able to maintain brand equity after a product–harm crisis, even if they responded positively and proactively to remedy the harm. Furthermore, if the weak prior expectation firm responded to the product–harm crisis by stonewalling, it suffered a disproportionately larger loss of brand equity than companies about which consumers had positive prior expectations. This finding corroborates the result in the Sen and Bhattacharya (2001) research in which all consumers were found to react to negative CSR information, but only those supportive of the CSR domain reacted to positive CSR information.
In addition to replicating the findings of Study 2 and ruling out a demand effect interpretation of our results, Study 2 also sheds light on a boundary condition of the effect of CSR. We find that CSR influences brand evaluations for all consumers, but that it only affects attributions when consumers see the CSR issue as important to them. This suggests that only those who care about the issue are motivated to access CSR information and to make attributions that are consistent with the firm's CSR record. Moreover, it is only for these consumers that attributions will play a mediating role. These findings point to a contingency for the new role of CSR that the present research uncovers. Specifically, it appears that the ‘insurance’ role of CSR works primarily for consumers for whom CSR