Author(s): Bidisha Burman,Swati Verma, Cecilia Ruvalcaba, Sacha Joseph-Mathews
During crises, organizations face unique communication challenges as consumers experience high stress and uncertainty. This research examines the effectiveness of corporate social responsibility (CSR) advertising appeals for products with crisis-mitigating attributes. Study 1 investigates how rational, promotional CSR, and philanthropic CSR appeals, together with self-referencing, influence consumer evaluations in a health-risk context. Results show that rational appeals generate the highest purchase intention, whereas philanthropic CSR appeals enhance prosocial perceptions of the company. In contrast, promotional CSR appeals generate the least favorable evaluations. Further, self-referencing influences these effects with differences among appeal types diminishing as self-referencing increases. Study 2 demonstrates that high product- cause fit, combined with self-referencing, improves consumer evaluations through processing fluency. Moderated mediation analysis supports these relationships. Together, these findings extend research on crisis communication and CSR advertising by identifying when and why different communication strategies are most effective during periods of societal uncertainty.