Deflecting resistance to persuasion: exploring CSR message strategies on consumer evaluations

ABSTRACT

Awareness of persuasive intent often results in resistance to persuasion. In this study, we investigated conditions under which explicit persuasive intent may not cause resistance to persuasion in CSR message strategies. Specifically, we examined the interplay between persuasive intent and regulatory-framed CSR messages in a marketing communication context. We found that the negative effect of explicit persuasive intent is less pronounced in promotion-focused messages than in prevention-focused CSR messages. Additionally, our mediation analyses further illustrated the persuasion resistance mechanism by showing that the interaction effects of persuasive intent and regulatory focus are serially mediated by the perceived manipulativeness of the CSR message and the brand trustworthiness.

KEYWORDS:

• Corporate social responsibility
• persuasive intent
• regulatory focus
• mediation analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID

Sang Yeal Lee http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6552-214X

Ji Young Lee http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7577-8843

Hongmin Ahn http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8253-9776

Notes

1 We initially theorized and hypothesized that brand attachment (which was a measured variable) would moderate the effects of the two manipulated variables (e.g. persuasive intent and regulatory focus). The data analysis, however, showed weak effects for brand attachment and, therefore, subsequently dropped from the data analysis. However, given that the study used an existing brand, brand attachment was used as a covariate in the data analysis to exclude any influence of the existing brand in the study (Mishra et al., 2017).