Going social: how to effectively
upgrade your reputation
An investigative study into content style of
CSR-communication on social media and the effects on corporate
trust and corporate reputation
.
Amsterdam Business School Thesis MSc BA Digital Business Eva Klinkhamer
10378804
Supervisor: Dr. M. Etter Final version: 22/06/2018 Word count: 17.589
Statement of originality
This document is written by student Eva Klinkhamer who declares to take full
responsibility for the contents of this document.
I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and
that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have
been used in creating it.
The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision
of completion of the work, not for the contents.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION ... 6
2. LITERATURE REVIEW AND CONCEPTUAL MODEL ... 8
2.1.2. Perks of a favourable corporate reputation ... 9
2.1.3. Establishing a corporate reputation ... 10
2.2. CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY ... 13
2.2.1. CSR as hot topic ... 13
2.2.2. CSR components and types ... 14
2.2.3. Beneficial outcomes of being perceived as a socially responsible firm ... 16
2.3. CSR-COMMUNICATION ... 18
2.3.1. CSR-communication as a powerful tool ... 18
2.3.2. CSR-communication perspectives ... 19
2.3.3. Message content ... 20
2.3.4. Message channel ... 23
2.5. CORPORATE TRUST ... 28
2.6. CONCLUSION AND RESEARCH GAP ... 29
3. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK ... 30
4. METHODS ... 34
4.1. SAMPLE AND DATA COLLECTION ... 34
4.2. RESEARCH DESIGN ... 36
4.3. PROCEDURE ... 37
4.4. STIMULUS MATERIAL ... 38
4.4.1. Fictitious subject of research and CSR-type ... 39
4.4.2. Media richness ... 39 4.4.3. Concreteness ... 41 4.4.4. Pretest ... 42 4.5. MEASURES ... 43 4.6. ELABORATION ON ANALYSIS ... 44 4.6.1. Preparation of data ... 45
4.6.2. Explanation for choice of analyses ... 47
5. RESULTS ... 48
5.1. DATA EXPLORATION ... 48
5.2. MANIPULATION CHECK ... 49
5.3. HYPOTHESIS TESTING ... 50
5.3.1. H1: Media richness and corporate reputation ... 50
5.3.2. H2a: Media richness, trust and corporate reputation ... 50
5.3.3. H2b: Media richness and trust ... 51
5.3.4. H2c: Corporate trust and corporate reputation ... 52
5.3.5. H3a: Concreteness, media richness and corporate reputation ... 52
5.3.6. H3b: Concreteness, media richness and trust ... 53
5.3.7. Additional findings and summary of results ... 55
6. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION ... 55
6.1. DISCUSSION ... 55
6.2. CONCLUSION ... 58
6.3. IMPLICATIONS ... 59
7.1. LIMITATIONS ... 60
7.2. FUTURE RESEARCH ... 62
8. REFERENCES ... 64
9. APPENDICES ... 74
9.1. APPENDIX 1: FULL MAIN SURVEY ... 74
9.2. APPENDIX 2: FULL LIST OF PRETEST QUESTIONS ... 76
9.3. APPENDIX 3: FICTITIOUS COMPANY ECHO LOGO AND TEXT ... 77
9.4.1. Stimulus 1: rich and concrete ... 78
9.4.2. Stimulus 2: rich and abstract ... 79
9.4.3. Stimulus 3: lean and concrete ... 80
9.4.4. Stimulus 4: lean and abstract ... 80
9.5. APPENDIX 5: DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF RESULTS PRETEST ... 80
9.6. APPENDIX 6: TABLE CONTAINING PLAIN TEXTS OF STIMULI ... 81
LIST OF ALL TABLES AND FIGURES Figure 1. Conceptual framework………..34
Table 1. Experimental conditions……….37
Table 2: Definition and operationalization of media richness (Daft & Lengel, 1986)……….40
Table 3: Operationalization of concreteness………...42
Table 4. Measures of main variables………....44
Table 5. Cronbachs Alpha, Skewness and Kurtosis.………47
Table 6. Mean, Standard deviation and Correlations of Study Variables………49
Table 7. Independent samples T-tests for media richness and concreteness………50
Table 8. Mean, Standard deviation and Correlations of trust, corporate reputation and media richness……….51
Table 9. Mean, Standard deviation and Correlations of concreteness, corporate reputation and media richness………...52
Table 10. Mean, Standard deviation and correlations of concreteness, trust and media richness………...………..53
ABSTRACT
This study explores how content-style of corporate social responsibility (CSR)-communication on social media affects corporate reputation. Furthermore, the mediating role of corporate trust in this relationship will be investigated. In total, 206 participants took part in this online experiment that employed a 2 (media richness: lean or rich) X 2 (concreteness: abstract or concrete) design. Main findings point out that media richness of CSR-statements on social media, has an indirect effect on corporate reputation through consumer trust, but only if the content-style of the post is concrete. Abstract CSR-statements on social media on the other hand, do not affect corporate reputation. These findings greatly contribute to CSR-communication theories, since research has not yet explored the differential effects that content-style of CSR-messages can cause on corporate reputation. Moreover, this research validated the application of the media richness theory (Daft & Lengel, 1986) as applicable amongst messages within the realms of one rich social medium. Apart from theory, these findings also address important recommendations for communication-managers around Western Europe. Effective CSR-communication strategies for social media should include a concrete message-style if the aims are to affect their corporations’ reputation. The research paper closes with a discussion of limitations and recommendations for future research.
1. INTRODUCTION
What do Louis Vuitton, Gucci and UNICEF have in common? At first glance, you might only come up with the clothing aspect of the first two. However, what really links these corporations together is their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)-partnerships. Since 2005, Gucci has contributed more than US $20 million to UNICEF’s work (UNICEF, 2015). Louis Vuitton designed a US $500 dollar silver Lockit pendant and bracelet of which for every sold piece they donate US $200 directly to UNICEF (Louis Vuitton, n.d.).
Over the last couple of years, a lot has been said and written about CSR: ‘The responsibility of enterprises for their impact on society’ (European Commission, 2001). Academics, as well as the press and corporate professionals, are interested in the effects and antecedents of CSR (Morsing & Schultz, 2008). Therefore, main topics of CSR-research include company-motivations to engage in CSR (Du, Bhattacharya & Sen, 2010; Forehand & Grier, 2003), (mis)-fit between company and sponsor (Becker-Olsen, Cudmore and Hill, 2006; Wagner et al., 2009) and lastly: CSR-communication strategies (Gotsi & Wilson, 2001; Hooghiemstra, 2002; Jahdi & Acikdilli, 2009). Effective CSR-communication strategies have the ability to affect consumer-evaluations of companies’ CSR-activities (Castaldo et al., 2009; Gotsi & Wilson, 2001). This makes CSR-communication an antecedent of corporate reputation, a construct affected by consumer-evaluations of companies’ CSR-activities (Hooghiemstra, 2002). Moreover, CSR-communication has shown to affect corporate trust, which is another antecedent of corporate reputation (Park et al., 2014). These findings all indicate that the effects of CSR-communications on corporate reputation are extensive.
Over the last few years, traditional CSR-communication strategies had to change, due to the rise of Web 2.0, in order to keep reaching target audiences. Therefore, Corporate Communication practitioners are constantly in search of effective CSR-communication strategies to promote their companies based on their social responsibility programmes. These
strategies became even more complex since social media became an important marketing- and communications tool over the last few years. CSR-communication strategies specifically focused on social media is quite an emerging research field, with lots yet to explore. One of the key aspects of social media, is its ‘rich’ nature (Daft & Lengel, 1986). However, as anyone can confirm, social media do not have to be used in a rich manner causing richness to differ per post. The majority of current research into CSR-communication content-styles describe that concrete statements are more effective than abstract statements (Van Rekom & Berens, 2008; Schmeltz, 2012; Soojong & Bae, 2016). It is unclear if these findings are valid in the context of social media, since social media is a relatively new CSR-communication channel.
Therefore, the aim of this research paper is to explore the effects of different content-styles of CSR-communication on social media. The content content-styles that are under investigation in this research are concreteness and media richness. The aims of the research are twofold: firstly it will try to fill a gap in knowledge concerning effective CSR-communication strategies on social media as ‘new media’. Second, the research contributes to practical knowledge by identifying effective strategies that enable practitioners to affect their corporation’s reputation. Based on this goal, the following research question is formulated:
RQ1: How does content-style (concrete/abstract and richness) of CSR-communication on social media affect corporate reputation?
Furthermore, the role of corporate trust on this relationship will be explored, since research has shown corporate trust to be an important antecedent of the corporate reputation and an outcome of the CSR-communication.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW AND CONCEPTUAL MODEL
This chapter is dedicated to the identification and description of relevant theory in the fields of corporate reputation, CSR and CSR-communication, social media and corporate trust. First, current knowledge concerning the concepts of corporate reputation, CSR and CSR-communication are discussed, to get an understanding of what these entail, how they relate and what their antecedents are. This is followed by a brief description of literature on social-media communication. Concluding, literature concerning corporate trust will be reviewed.
2.1. Corporate reputation
In this part, main findings in the field of corporate reputation will be discussed, followed by an explanation of how the term is of interest in relation to CSR and CSR communication.
2.1.1. A variety of definitions
The definition of corporate reputation as used in academic literature varies considerably, mainly depending on the research area that employs the term (Rindova et al., 2005). The meaning of the term differs based on perspective (Rindova et al., 2005). From a marketing perspective, reputation usually has to do with the level of firm-awareness, whereas from an economics perspective, reputation has to do with an attribute ascribed to a firm, based on actions in the past (Rindova et al., 2005). Gotsi and Wilson (2001) decided to compare the variety of interpretations that was circulating, aiming to establish one clear final definition of corporate reputation. They concluded that the following definition entails all aspects: “A corporate reputation is a stakeholder’s overall evaluation of a company over time. This evaluation is based on the stakeholder’s direct experiences with the company, any other form of communication and symbolism that provides information about the firm’s actions and/or a comparison with the actions of other leading rivals.’’ (Gotsi & Wilson, 2001, pp. 29). Barnett, Jermier and Lafferty (2006) carried out a similar research, after which they developed a definition quite similar to the definition of Gotsi and Wilson (2001): ‘‘A corporate reputation
are observers’ collective judgments of a corporation based on assessments of the financial, social, environmental impacts attributed to the corporation over time.’’ (Barnett, Jermier & Lafferty, 2006, pp. 34). Both definitions stress the importance of approaching a corporate reputation as a dynamic construct, influenced by multiple ways in which a company projects its images: behaviour, symbolism and communication, as again confirmed in later research (Lange, Lee and Dai, 2011). In addition, both definitions are equivalent on the basis of their emphasis on time and the multiplicity of antecedents.
2.1.2. Perks of a favourable corporate reputation
Among marketing academics, the subject of corporate reputation has attracted a large amount of interest, mainly with regards to the potential benefits that emerge from having a favourable corporate reputation. Therefore, a lot of research has been conducted into the value of being perceived as a ‘good’ company (Gotsi & Wilson, 2001).
From an economic perspective, a favourable reputation has multiple positive outcomes. Rindova et al. (2005) argue that the price premiums are the main positive outcome of a favourable corporate reputation. These are not only driven by evaluations of the firm, but most of all by prominence of the firm in the minds of the consumers (Rindova et al., 2005). Walsh, Mitchell, Jackson and Beatty (2009) concluded customer loyalty to be another effect of a favourable corporate reputation. Bartikowski, Walsh and Beatty (2011), later confirmed this relationship, by observing that reputation has a positive effect on affective and intentional loyalty, suggesting that a favourable reputation leads to more customer intentions to do business with the firm. Moreover, they found evidence for a direct and positive relationship between corporate reputation and both Word-of-Mouth and customer retention (Mitchell, Jackson and Beatty, 2009). Additionally, Castaldo, Perrini, Misani and Tencati (2009) found evidence that customers have an increased purchase-intention at companies that are perceived as socially oriented. Lastly, Lange, Lee and Dai (2011) concluded that a strong corporate
reputation could minimize the effects of sudden outbreaks of negative information about the company. This argues that positive consequences of a favourable reputation are also precautionary.
A favourable reputation also has its benefits when taking an employer perspective. Turban and Cable (2003) and Collins and Han (2004), provided evidence for a favourable corporate reputation to be a driver of attracting a higher quality of applicants. Moreover, a sympathetic reputation can help to increase motivation amongst employees (Collins and Han, 2004; Turban and Cable, 2003).
Moreover, a favourable corporate reputation has a positive outcome with regards to suppliers and business partners. Transaction costs for negotiations are potentially lower in case of a favourable reputation, since monitoring costs for counterparties are lower (Raithel & Schwaiger, 2015). Additionally, credit risk perceptions of suppliers are generally lower in case of a favourable corporate reputation. This implicates that firms with a favourable reputation have advantages in getting short-term financing (Van den Bogaerd & Aerts, 2015). Concluding, a positive corporate reputation has a lot of value for companies, since it impacts multiple stakeholder groups. Corporate reputation has the ability to increase customer loyalty, is a driver of positive WOM and positively affects customer retention. Moreover, it offers advantages in negotiating with business parties and increases quality of employees. Therefore, establishing a favourable corporate reputation is imperative for companies.
2.1.3. Establishing a corporate reputation
After demonstrating the beneficial outcomes of a favourable corporate reputation, the next part will articulate strategies to establish and maintain a favourable corporate reputation. Multiple antecedents of a corporate reputation will be discussed.
Van Riel (1997) identified profit as the largest positive antecedent of reputation, followed by the organization’s market value and visibility of the organisation in the media.
On the contrary, risk has a negative influence on reputation (Van Riel, 1997). In addition, he identified familiarity, branch characteristic and economic climate to shape a corporate reputation, with the first being the main driver: low-familiarity organizations tend to be judged on brand characteristic and economic climate, whereas familiar organizations tend to already have a more established, sophisticated reputation. Greyser (1999) identified familiarity to be of influence too, alongside competitive effectiveness, market leadership, customer focus, corporate cultures and communications. A year after, Fombrun, Gardberg and Sever (2000) identified six antecedents of a corporate reputation: emotional appeal, products and services, vision and leadership, workplace environment, social and environmental responsibility and financial performance, as later confirmed by Rose and Thomsen (2004). Based on these components, they proposed a measurement-instrument for corporate reputation (Fombrun, Gardberg and Sever, 2000). Their ‘reputation quotient’ was established in order to improve the solidness of reputation measures that were available at that time, by proposing one validated and reliable measurement instrument (Fombrun, Gardberg and Sever, 2000). Additional research into the antecedents of corporate reputation emphasized that a corporate reputation is constantly reconstructed and reconstituted after new information comes to light (Lange, Lee and Dai, 2011). Therefore, when building a favourable reputation, processes of social construction in the minds of consumers should be taken into account (Lange, Lee & Dai, 2011). Since these processes rely on how consumers perceive information, these processes can be affected by carrying out the right communication-strategies. This important role of communication in constructing a favourable corporate reputation was confirmed by an experiment demonstrating that CSR campaigns enhance people’s perceptions of the reputation of that same company (Pfau, High, Sims and Wigley, 2008). Even though these different scholars disagree on the exact antecedents of corporate
reputation, they also identified common antecedents like the emphasis on economic gain, employees, leadership, social responsibility and communications.
There are also scholars that take a completely different approach as to how corporate reputations are established in the minds of consumers. According to Schwaiger (2004), corporate reputation is an attitude construct that can be split into two dimensions: a cognitive dimension he calls ‘competence’ and an affective dimension he calls ‘sympathy’. The cognitive dimension is driven by rational outcomes of high reputation, such as performance. The affective dimension is made up out of the emotions respondents have towards a company. In his conclusion he argues that performance aspects increase the ‘competence’ component of corporate reputation, but simultaneously dampen the ‘sympathy’ component. Additionally, responsibility items influence the components the exact the other way around (Schwaiger, 2004). He concluded that since the contradicting outcomes of both dimensions can be challenging to intertwine, establishing a favourable corporate reputation can be troublesome (Schwaiger, 2004).
Rindova, Williamson, Petkova and Sever (2005) propose a model in which corporate reputation exists out of two dimensions as well. Their dimensions however, are different than the dimensions proposed by Schwaiger (2004). On the one hand, Rindova et al. (2005) identifies that stakeholder-perceptions about the quality of the goods an organization produces affect corporate reputation. On the other hand they identify the prominence of the organization in the minds of stakeholders (Rindova et al., 2005). Perceived quality of goods consists out of multiple antecedents: quality of inputs and of productivity assets. Multiple antecedents also affect prominence of the firm in the mind of the consumer: media rankings, certifications of achievement and a firm’s affiliation with high-status actors (Rindova et al., 2005).
Concluding, research into corporate reputation emphasizes that it is a dynamic construct, built up over time and influenced by multiple components such as financial performance, emotional appeal, corporate culture/workplace environment, social and environmental responsibility and communications. Some scholars argue that communications should get more attention, since it is a means to affect the social construction-processes in the minds of the consumers and these social construction-processes affects a reputation. Lastly, there are multiple beneficial outcomes of having a favourable corporate reputation, such as price premiums, improved customer loyalty and improved customer retention.
2.2. Corporate Social Responsibility
This chapter will discuss the practices of CSR, currently a very hot topic for European-based corporations. First, the relevance of CSR to society and firms will be discussed. After, the different components CSR-practices entail will be discussed. Lastly, the reasons for CSR as a beneficial business practice will be explained.
2.2.1. CSR as hot topic
The 1950’s announced the ‘modern era’ of CSR (Carroll, 1999). In was not until the late 70’s however, that CSR became socially legitimized. Before then, the sole responsibility of companies was to maximize financial returns. After the social legislation of CSR this changed into valuing the environment, consumers and employees as stakeholders as well (Carroll, 1991). Already in these early stages of the European CSR-rage, the beneficial effects to maximize business returns were acknowledged and integrated MarCom programmes to reach maximal beneficial effects proposed (Manheim & Pratt, 1986). Throughout the years, CSR became a hotter and more important topic (Skarmeas & Leonidou, 2013), which the European Commission acknowledged, stating that there are three main reasons for the relevance of CSR (2001): it is in the interest of enterprises, the EU-economy and in the interests of society (European commission, 2001). Taking the enterprise-perspective, the rise of the World Wide
Web caused consumers to be more informed than ever, which makes being known as a ‘good’ company of high relevance. Since information is power, this development led to a general empowerment of consumers, of which they are very much aware and eager to use for the good (Dawkins, 2004). More so, consumers are aware of their power to punish ‘bad’ companies (Dawkins, 2004): purchases nowadays are not only based on the quality of the product, but on consumer-evaluations of the company too. Moreover, recently more and more official guidelines for CSR-practices, CSR-reporting and CSR-standards are coming about
(Fombrun, 2005).
2.2.2. CSR components and types
In an early conceptualization of CSR, Carroll (1979), proposed that a comprehensive definition of CSR should include not only legal and economic obligations of companies towards stakeholders, but also the philantropical responsibilities of ethics and discretionary. In addition, Carroll (1979) proposed that optimal CSR-performance runs through three steps: assessment of a firm’s social responsibilities, identification of a firm’s social issues to address and deciding on a response philosophy (Carroll, 1979). A later official definition by the European Commission followed Carroll’s (1979) conceptualization. The European Commission states that companies can become socially responsible if they either follow the law, or try to ‘‘Integrate social, environmental, ethical, consumer and human rights concerns into their business strategy and operations’’ (European Commission, 2001).
Following his earlier research into CSR, Carroll (1991) later designed the ‘pyramid of social responsibility’, based on the four CSR components he previously proposed (Carroll, 1979). The bottom level of the pyramid consists of the economic responsibilities of a firm: to be maximally profitable. One layer above features the legal responsibilities of firms: the fact that they should obey the law and play by the rules. Another layer up features the ethical responsibilities of firms. In order to be socially responsible, firms should know what is right
and what is wrong, what is just and what is fair and act accordingly. Harm towards others should always be avoided, a component that is being emphasized in the CSR-definition by Mohr, Webb and Harris (2001, pp 47): “CSR is a company’s commitment to minimizing or eliminating any harmful effects and maximizing its long-run beneficial impact on society.’’ The last and upper layer of the pyramid consists of the philantropical responsibilities of firms. Firms should act like good corporate citizens, by trying to improve the quality of life and contribute to the community (Carroll, 1991). Even though this pyramid may sound simple, trying to live up to multiple layers of the pyramid at the same time can be difficult. Trying to rhyme economic responsibilities with the philantropical responsibilities can cause tensions. Therefore, becoming a socially responsible firm is a great aspiration for firms but integrative strategies still have to be identified.
Since the 1990’s, the definitional landscape of CSR has not changed much, but expanding approaches and related constructs did come up. In an attempt to give structure Garriga and Melé (2004) tried to classify the main CSR theories. They came up with a model in which theories are classified in four groups. First of all, the instrumental theories are theories that approach the corporation as nothing more than an instrument to achieve economic outcomes. The political theories describe the power that corporations have within society and the responsible application of this power. Third, the integrative theories describe that fulfillment of social demands should be the main focus of corporations. Lastly, the ethical theories are based on the ethical obligations of corporations to society (Garriga & Melé, 2004).
CSR is often approached as a uniform practice, but research has shown that over different continents CSR applications tend to differ. CSR is historically more explicit in the US than Europe. However, recently there seems to be a shift amongst European corporations from implicit to explicit CSR. Matten and Moon (2008), attribute these differences, as well as
the shift, as institutional. Up until recently it was not embedded in European culture to make explicit statements about responsibility behaviours. However, since the world became more and more globalized, European-based corporations tend to adopt more internationally oriented cultures (Matten & Moon, 2008).
Lastly, there are multiple types of CSR: affective CSR, corporate social marketing and regular business practices such as environmental protection and human rights (Porter & Kramer, 2006). Research pointed out that affective CSR-types are responsible for the direct and indirect relationship between CSR-behaviours and corporate reputation, therefore the focus of this research. Within the affective types of CSR, there are four types of business-nonprofit collaborations: philantropy/charitable donations, socio-sponsorship, cause-related marketing and social alliances (Seitanadi & Ryan, 2007).
2.2.3. Beneficial outcomes of being perceived as a socially responsible firm
Many studies have been conducted to measure the positive effects of CSR-behaviours from a corporate financial and economic perspective, also referred to as ‘the business case’ for CSR (Carroll & Shabana, 2010). CSR has a lot of beneficial outcomes and can be very effective when used for strategic purposes.
Carroll and Shabana (2010) differentiate between the narrow and broad perspective of ‘the business case’ for CSR. The narrow view focuses on direct and clear links from CSR to financial performance of firms, whereas the broad view focuses on direct and indirect links from CSR initiatives to firm performance. The broad view is more widely applicable and approaches CSR as a means in increasing a corporation's competitive advantage. Therefore, firms should take the broad approach to CSR, which means acknowledging the indirect effects of CSR through a substantial amount of mediating variables (Carroll and Shabana, 2010). Within the broad perspective, the potential benefits of CSR can be classified into four categories: reducing cost and risk, building competitive advantage, strengthen reputation and
legitimacy and fourth, create a situation in which all parties will win: value creation for all (Kurucz, Colbert & Wheeler, 2008).
To begin with, CSR has an effect on financial performance and brand equity. McWilliams and Siegel (2000), concluded in their investigation into the potential role of firm performance on the perceived relationship between CSR and financial performance, that CSR has a neutral impact on financial performance when controlling for firm performance, as also confirmed by Carroll and Shabana (2010). On a brand level, more recent research found evidence for both CSR and corporate reputation to have positive effects on brand performance and brand equity in Business-to-Business markets, which causes industrial brand equity (Lai, Chiu, Yang & pai, 2010). This indicates that CSR is not only relevant to consumers, but also to possible business-partners. In research on the advertising effects of CSR on corporate reputation and brand equity, Hsu (2012) confirmed this effect and generalized it back into Business-to-Consumer markets. His results pointed out that CSR-initiatives have a positive effect on corporate reputation, customer satisfaction and brand equity (Hsu, 2012). Furthermore, CSR has a positive impact on global brand equity towards stakeholder-groups: customers, shareholders, employees, suppliers and the general community (Torres, Bijmoldt, Tribó and Verhoef, 2012). In addition, there was evidence for strong positive benefits of local CSR-policies through the generation of Brand Equity (Torres, Bijmoldt, Tribó and Verhoef, 2012). Based on these findings, recommendations for managers of global brands were to combine local CSR-initiatives with global strategies in order to satisfy all communities (Torres, Bijmoldt, Tribó and Verhoef, 2012).
Moreover, CSR has a direct and indirect effect on purchase intent (Mohr & Webb, 2005; Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001) and company evaluations. The latter effect is mediated by consumer-perceptions of self-company congruence (Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001). The effects on purchase intent and company evaluations indicate that CSR has a twofold effect. First, it
has an effect on routine consumer behaviour such as rational decision making. Second, it has a so-called ‘halo effect’, or spillover effect, on usually unrelated consumer judgements, for example in the evaluation of a new product (Klein & Dawar, 2004).
Furthermore, CSR can be implemented as a strategy to differentiate at corporate-level (Becker-Olsen, Cudmore & Hill, 2006; McWilliams, Siegel & Wright, 2006), which is confirmed by more recent research concluding that CSR has the ability to differentiate a company from competitors (Zhang, Guo, Hu & Liu, 2017).
In sum, literature pointed out that CSR has been hot topic over the last few years within European-based companies. CSR has multiple beneficial outcomes for corporations, as well as for the environment and society.
2.3. CSR-communication
This chapter focuses on main findings within the practice of CSR-communication: a powerful tool when strategically applied. First, CSR-communication as a powerful tool in affecting corporate reputation will be discussed, after which different perspectives on communication will be highlighted. Following, current knowledge on effective CSR-communication strategies will be discussed.
2.3.1. CSR-communication as a powerful tool
Research has shown that it is not the actual CSR-behaviours that affect a corporate reputation, but the way these behaviours are perceived (Castaldo et al., 2009; Gotsi & Wilson, 2001; Hartman, Rubin & Dhanda, 2007; Mohr & Webb, 2005). Therefore, companies can affect their own reputation by affecting consumer-evaluations of their CSR-behaviours. A means to affect consumer-evaluations is corporate communication (Gotsi & Wilson, 2001; Jahdi & Acikdilli, 2009). Corporate communication is defined as follows: “Corporate communications is a management function that offers a framework and vocabulary for the effective coordination of all means of communications with the overall purpose of establishing and
maintaining favourable reputations with stakeholder groups upon which the organization is dependent.” (Cornelissen, 2017, pp. 23). Hooghiemstra (2002) confirmed that CSR-communication is a powerful tool, demonstrating that CSR-CSR-communication can affect people’s perception. Additionally, Jahdi and Acikdilli (2009) found some companies not only able to employ CSR in a way that it affected consumer-perceptions, but even able to make CSR their USP (Unique Selling Proposition), causing competitive advantage.
2.3.2. CSR-communication perspectives
Hooghiemstra (2002) differentiates between two main perspectives when it comes to the goals of CSR-communications: the first is providing information in order to legitimise company actions and the second is using it in order to protect company image or reputation, which also creates competitive advantage (Hooghiemstra, 2000).
Most consumers are not actively aware of CSR-practices by large corporations (Dawkins, 2004), indicating that the key issue in CSR-communications is not only to affect consumer-evaluations of behaviours, but making sure consumers recall the CSR-behaviours. Morsing and Schultz (2008), propose a corporate CSR-communication model that integrates expert CSR-communication processes that make use of facts and figures, with endorsed CSR communication processes that use third party stakeholders in their communications. Moreover, this combination is an effective means to increase company trust (Morsing & Schultz, 2008).
Another aspect to consider in CSR-communication is culture of the audience. U.S.-based companies employ different CSR-communications than European-U.S.-based companies (Hartman, Rubin & Dhanda, 2007). This phenomenon can be explained by looking into deep-rooted cultural value-differences. European-based companies tend to use language based on citizenship, moral commitment and corporate ability (Hartman, Rubin & Dhanda, 2007) and incorporate financial and sustainable elements in justifying their CSR-activities (Hartman,
Rubin & Dhanda, 2007). U.S.-based companies on the other hand, use merely economic terms and financial justifications. Morsing and Schultz (2008) confirmed this, finding that European companies tend to have an implicit CSR approach, in which CSR is embedded in the national institutional systems, whereas U.S.-based companies take on an explicit CSR approach in which CSR-strategies are explicitly being articulated.
In their attempts of building a conceptual framework of CSR-communication, Du, Bhattacharya & Sen (2010) identified three main issues that drive CSR-communication: message content, message channel and external company- and stakeholder-specific factors. The two issues that can be affected by companies themselves, content and channel, will be discussed below.
2.3.3. Message content
Research into CSR-communication-content has revolved mainly around a certain set of themes: company-motivations to engage in CSR programmes, consumer-interpretations of CSR-behaviours and perceived fit between company and sponsor (Becker-Olsen, Cudmore and Hill, 2006; Cornwell, 2005; Du, Bhattacharya & Sen, 2010; Ellen et al, 2006; Forehand & Grier, 2003; Yoon, Gürhan-Canli & Schwarz, 2006). Even though this research will explore other factors that affect a corporate reputation, being concreteness of message style and media richness, the former factors do affect corporate reputation as well. Therefore, they will be briefly discussed before diving deeper into literature on concreteness of message-style and media richness.
2.3.3.1. Motivations, attributions and fit
Stakeholder attributions of CSR-motives can be intrinsic, extrinsic or mixed (Du, Bhattacharya & Sen, 2010; Forehand & Grier, 2003). Intrinsic attributions take place when stakeholders perceive CSR-behaviours as an act out of concern for the issue, whilst extrinsic attributions appear when stakeholders perceive CSR-behaviours as an act of increasing profits
(Du, Bhattacharya & Sen, 2010; Morsing & Schultz, 2008). Additionally, research has shown that CSR-activities improve a company’s image only when consumers attribute these activities as being sincere. Ambiguous attributions on the other hand, cause CSR-activities to be ineffective, which leads to possible damage to the company’s image (Yoon, Gürhan-Canli & Schwarz, 2006; Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001) or raises feelings of corporate hypocrisy (Cornwell, 2005). Therefore, a key challenge within CSR-communication is minimizing scepticism amongst stakeholders, by communicating CSR-activities in such a way that they will be attributed as sincere and intrinsic (Ellen et al, 2006; Morsing & Schultz, 2008).
Research has shown that the way in which companies legitimize their CSR-activities differ greatly. Coupland (2005), identified four virtuous circle rhetorics: responsible legitimation, societal legitimation, context specific legitimation and other de-legitimation. If organizations want to be persuasive in their CSR-activities, they cannot rely on institutionalised arguments (Coupland, 2005).
Research also pointed out that perceived fit of partners in CSR-initiatives plays an important role consumer-evaluations of the initiatives (Becker-Olsen, Cudmore and Hill, 2006). Fit plays such a crucial role, that even when consumer-attributions of the motives are positive, the negative effect of low-fit initiatives holds up (Becker-Olsen, Cudmore and Hill, 2006). Literature revealed that partnership credibility, which can be influenced by articulating the ‘fit’ between corporate and charity, is most important in diminishing feelings of corporate hypocrisy (Ellen et al., 2006; Wagner et al., 2009). The articulation theory prescribes a way to improve the perceived congruence between sponsor and charity (Cornwell, Weeks & Roy, 2005). It describes that literally naming the fit between parties in the partnership causes stakeholders to understand why the parties partnered up leading to an increase in corporate trust and a decrease in scepticism towards the company (Gotsi & Wilson, 2001; Ellen et al, 2006).
2.3.3.2. Concreteness of information
Concreteness of information shared in CSR-communication is another content-factor that can affect consumer-evaluations of CSR-behaviours. Van Rekom and Berens (2008) found that factualness of the message positively affects the diagnostic value of CSR-messages, which in turn leads to a more positive corporate reputation. Moreover, message factualness positively affects message-credibility, which significantly increases corporate reputation on the ground of corporate ability (Van Rekom & Berens, 2008). This is an interesting conclusion: apparently the amount of factualness of CSR-behaviours has a positive influence on perceived ability about a firm’s core business. These findings indicate that factual ads are perceived as more credible than impressionistic ads and that this perceived credibility positively affects corporate reputation. An explanation for these findings can be found in early research regarding message factualness. According to Darley & Smith (1993) and Holbrook (1978), information in factual advertisement is not subject to a variety of different interpretations and therefore more verifiable than advertisement containing abstract information. Consequently the public perceives factual information as more reliable. These findings are multiple times confirmed and even specified. Soojong and Bae (2016) found that concrete messages have a positive effect on attitude towards a company and purchase intention. Additionally, they found that this effect was higher for Koreans than for Americans, based on their levels of uncertainty avoidance: high for Koreans and low for Americans. Having a strong level of uncertainty avoidance means someone struggles to deal with change and innovation. This indicates that individual and cultural differences should be taken into account when developing a CSR-communication strategy.
Schmeltz (2012) also confirmed the positive effects of concrete CSR-communication, concluding consumers to expect more explicit CSR-communication than companies currently assume. Consumers look for factual based and personal relevant information, so consumers
are more interested in explicit CSR-communication (Schmeltz, 2012). Another interesting finding is that the value system that drives consumers’ CSR-evaluations is focused on competence and self-centered- and personal values. This indicates that CSR-communication affects perceived competence and ability of a company, confirming the findings of Van Rekom and Berens (2008).
All previous findings revolved around CSR-advertisements, involving the dissemination of information. The effectiveness of these strategies however, were not validated in a reactive context. Therefore, Wagner et al. (2009) explored the effectiveness of reactive CSR-strategies. He determined that abstract CSR-communication raises less feelings of corporate hypocrisy than concrete CSR-communication, after a third party disseminated concrete inconsistent CSR-information. ‘Inconsistent’ in this context means information that goes against the information the company itself distributes. This means that abstract, non-specific and non-factual CSR-communication tend to be the most effective strategy for companies that try to prevent negative evaluations of CSR-messages after inconsistent information about their company is published.
Concluding, previous research has identified multiple key-factors that affect the effectiveness of CSR-communications. When designing ‘CSR-advertising’, concrete messages positively affect message credibility, which in turn positively purchase intent and customer loyalty. However, research into reactive CSR-communication has shown that abstract messages prevent negative evaluations of CSR-messages, after inconsistent information came to light. These both perspectives can be difficult to intertwine.
2.3.4. Message channel
The second pillar of CSR-communication as identified by Du, Bhattacharya and Sen (2010) is message channel. Companies use a varied portfolio of CSR-communication channels, ranging from official documents like annual CSR-reports to statements on their own company
website, but also to the newer media channels like social media. This part will elaborate on current knowledge of social media as a CSR-communication channel.
2.3.4.1. Social media as effective communication channel
In the current age, where marketing- and communication-practices had to change their approach from a one-way broadcasting perspective to a two-way perspective in which building relationships with consumers is the ultimate goal (Taylor et al, 2001; Lee, Oh & Kim, 2013), using the web as an instrument for CSR-communication has shown to be essential (Moreno & Capriotti, 2009).
There are multiple advantages of integrating new media channels in CSR-communication strategies. These benefits mostly have to do with their characteristics of approachability, speed and connectivity they offer (Cástello, Morsing & Schultz, 2013). Especially when wanting to reach the young consumer, these media tend to work best. But using only corporate websites as a channel limits the possibilities the web has to offer. Corporate websites are limited in the sense that communications are mostly unidirectional (Moreno & Capriotti, 2009). Effective CSR-communication strategies incorporate transparency and most of all, dialogue (Birth, Illia & Zamparini, 2008). Dialogical communications have proven to result in more engaged audiences (Fieseler, Fleck & Meckel, 2010). In their research about the effects of sustainability blogs on stakeholder involvement, Fieseler, Fleck and Meckel (2010) concluded that social media positively affects stakeholder involvement. Additionally, Dijkmans, Kerkhof and Beukeboom (2015) found that corporate reputation is positively related to the engagement of especially non-consumers of the brand in social media activities. Therefore, the unidirectional nature of corporate websites and most traditional communication channels limit the possibilities for maximizing the effects of online CSR-communication. Social media channels on the other hand, do opt possibilities for multidirectional information exchange (Fieseler, Fleck & Meckel, 2010). That is where social
media take an advantage on corporate websites and should at least be used as an addition as part of effective CSR-communication strategies.
Another benefit of using social media as part of CSR-communication strategies, is that social media allow to make tailored content (Fieseler, Fleck & Meckel, 2010). Research has shown that effective CSR-strategies are specifically tailored to different stakeholder groups (Dawkins, 2004). Different stakeholders perceive similar messages differently, based on cultural values (Hartman, Rubin & Dhanda, 2007). Sending messages specifically tailored to cultural and personal preferences of these different stakeholder groups are consequently an indispensable part of effective CSR-communication strategies (Dawkins, 2004). There are also disadvantages of new media: since the dissemination of information is difficult to control online, companies will likely lose some control over information about their company (Du, Bhattacharya & Sen, 2010). A majority of the content on social media is user-generated, which means that companies cannot affect what information the public disseminates (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). However, there seems to be a trade-off between credibility and controllability of communications within the CSR-area: the more controllable, the less credible, which works the other way around as well. Therefore, especially in current online environment where consumers become more and more in control, advertising on less controllable media tends to be more effective when the aim is credibility (Du, Bhattacharya & Sen, 2010).
Concluding, results of key investigations in the area of CSR-communication strategies have proven that social media are an indispensable part of effective communication strategies. This is due to the engaging and dialogical nature of social media and to the opportunities they offer to make tailored content designed for different target-audiences.
2.3.4.2. Media richness theory
An explanation for the fact that social media have the ability to engage consumers more as opposed to traditional media is the dialogical nature, which is a characteristic of so-called ‘rich media’. According to the media richness theory (Daft and Lengel, 1986), richer media have increased performance. Rational and effective users tend to choose media that are appropriately rich in order to communicate effectively, since leaner media cause a decrease in task outcome quality (Daft & Lengel, 1989; Kock, 2005).
The media richness theory states that media can differ in the way they are ‘rich’, along a continuum of richness. The theory states that the richer the medium, the more information can be transmitted at the same time (Daft and Lengel, 1986). Daft and Lengel (1986) base their classification of richness of a medium on four criteria: The first criterion is ‘capacity for immediate feedback’. This refers to the quality and speed in which information can be transmitted through the medium (Daft and Lengel, 1986). The second criterion is ‘capacity to transmit multiple cues’, referring to the capacity of a medium to use multiple cues to facilitate conveyance of interpretation information. These cues include physical presence, body gestures, numbers, voice inflections and more (Daft and Lengel, 1986). The third criterion ‘language variety’, refers to the level of concept convection. This means that richer media have the ability to transmit multiple types of ‘language’, such as numbers, formulas and natural language (Daft and Lengel, 1986). The last criterion is ‘capacity of the medium to have a personal focus’ and refers to the ability of the medium to be personally tailored to the specific needs of the consumer. Moreover, it refers to the way in which emotions and feelings can be transmitted through the medium (Daft and Lengel, 1986).
Following the classification of media that Daft and Lengel (1986) proposed, media range from being ‘lean’ to ‘rich’. The leanest medium is a written text-document, since it does not have the ability to transmit emotions, cannot provide immediate feedback, does not
transmit multiple cues, and only uses text as a language (Lan & Sie, 2010). The richest medium on the other hand, is face-to-face communication, since it scores highest on the above stated four criteria: it has the ability to transmit emotions, provide immediate feedback, transmits multiple cues through facial expression, body language and spoken language or tone-of-voice (Dennis & Kinney, 1998; Lan & Sie, 2010).
2.3.4.3. Social media posts: lean or rich?
Social media have the ability to include features that go beyond text like video and audio, making it possible to transmit a multitude of information at the same time (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Therefore, social media can be classified as rich media. Applying Daft and Lengel’s (1986) four media richness-criteria to social media confirms this: social media have the ability to transmit emotions through for example the use of emoticons and possibilities of including video and audio. Moreover, social media have the ability to provide immediate feedback and transmit multiple cues, even simultaneously, through audio, video and text. Lastly, social media provides possibilities of bringing tone-of-voice across, again through the use of video and audio.
However, depending on the post, social media messages vary in their degree of richness. The exact contents of posts differ: users can decide to post only plain text, a photo, a photo incorporating text and even videos. This means that even though social media are generally classified as rich media, posts are not always making use of the unique characteristics that make them classify as rich. This results in a medium that itself is considered rich, whilst the message through this medium is not. Exploring the effects of these different types of post on the same rich channel, is therefore needed.
2.5. Corporate trust
Corporate trust has shown to be partially responsible of the effects of CSR on corporate reputation. When looking into research on corporate trust however, it stands out that the definition of the concept of corporate trust is varies a lot. Some scholars even refer to it as consumer trust. To be clear about the concept that is referred to when talking about corporate trust within this research paper, the definition of corporate trust that is applied in this paper is as follows: “Corporate trust is the consumer’s belief that a corporation will perform in a manner consistent with expectations regarding its expertise, integrity and goodwill’’ (Park et al, 2014, pg. 296).
Multiple antecedents, amongst which CSR and CSR-communication, affect corporate trust. Multiple researchers have confirmed the mediating role that corporate trust plays in the relationship between CSR and corporate reputation (Park et al., 2014). Research showed that CSR-behaviour influences corporate trust (Park, Lee & Kim, 2014; Swaen & Chumpitaz, 2009). Additionally, corporate trust is a mediator in the effects of CSR on firm performance (Pivato et al., 2008).
Moreover, research has shown that corporate trust is not only affected by CSR-activities, but also by CSR-communications. Etter and Fieseler (2010) not only confirmed this relationship, but specified two conditions under which CSR-communications have a positive influence on corporate trust: transparency and authenticity. If these conditions are met and a more favourable corporate trust is established, this will eventually influence corporate reputation in the same direction (Park, Lee & Kim, 2014).
Additionally, Park et al. (2014) identified that different types of CSR-behaviour affect corporate trust accordingly. The four types they specified are: ethical, philantropical, economic and legal CSR. They concluded that ethical and philanthropical types of CSR have a direct impact on corporate trust, after which corporate trust affects corporate reputation. In
addition, they concluded that ethical CSR-initiatives have the largest indirect effect on corporate reputation. They explain these larger effects of the both affective types of CSR as follows: ethical and philantropical CSR create consumer beliefs about the company as caring about society’s well being. These consumer beliefs consequently increase corporate trust. Hereafter, corporate trust influences corporate reputation. Additionally, economic and legal types of CSR appeared to have a direct impact on corporate reputation (Park et al., 2014).
This confirms the role of corporate trust as a mediating variable in the relationship between CSR-communication and corporate reputation. Concluding, corporate trust plays an important role in the establishment of favourable corporate reputations. Especially affective CSR-types tend to increase corporate trust.
2.6. Conclusion and research gap
In conclusion, over the last couple of decades CSR became an important area of research. Effective CSR-communication strategies can positively affect corporate reputations. Favourable corporate reputations have shown to cause maximal business returns to corporations by affecting customer loyalty, WOM and purchase intent. Therefore, trying to positively affect consumer-evaluations of your corporation can be an effective way in maximizing business profits.
A means to affecting consumer-evaluations and corporate reputations, is corporate communications. Since over the last couple of years European-based corporations are starting to articulate their activities more explicitly, the identification of effective CSR-communication strategies became in the interest of many large corporations. A lot of research has explored effective CSR-communication strategies and established that incorporating social media as one of the main CSR-communication channels in CSR-strategies, is a prerequisite in this digital age. Social media have key-characteristics that differentiate the channel from traditional media channels, like its dialogical nature and the rich classification
of the medium. However, since posts amongst each other, can differ on degree of richness, it remains unclear whether these different utilizations of the medium have different effects on corporate reputation when used as CSR-communication channel.
Concreteness of message has also shown to affect the relationship between CSR and corporate reputation. However, main findings from literature are contradicting each other about the most effective communication styles of CSR-related social media statements. Concrete information about CSR-activities have proven to have a greater and more positive effect on corporate reputation than abstract statements. However, this is not yet explored within the realm of CSR-communication specifically on social media, since this is still an emerging field. Therefore, revising traditional CSR-communication strategies to be more suited to the characteristics of social media would be a great contribution to current knowledge. Since literature is still limited on social media specific CSR-communication strategies, looking into the effects of richness of posts and concreteness of statements would greatly contribute to current CSR-communication knowledge. Moreover, this knowledge could be practically applied by corporate communication managers in order to optimize their CSR-communication strategies.
Therefore, this experiment aims to find effective CSR-communication strategies to be used on social media, with the ultimate goal of filling a gap in current academic knowledge on this emerging field. The additional goal of this research is to provide practical recommendations on CSR-communication strategies on social media to corporate communication managers throughout the Western-European world.
3. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
After literature research about CSR, CSR-communication, corporate trust and corporate reputation, a gap in knowledge was identified concerning the different effects of content-styles of CSR-communication via social media on corporate reputation. Academics have not
yet explored what the possibly differential effects of using a classified as rich medium, in a lean or rich way. Social media posts can vary amongst each other in the amounts of cues they send, the language variety that is being used and how personally focused the message is. This means that currently, knowledge about CSR-communication strategies on social media are still limited. Moreover, it is interesting to explore the role of corporate trust within this relationship, since previous studies identified a relationship between corporate CSR-activities and corporate reputation, whilst it is likely that this association has to do with CSR-communications, instead of the actual activities. In order to fill the gap in knowledge on these subjects, the research questions within this paper are as follows:
RQ1: How does content-style (concrete/abstract and richness) of CSR-communication via social media affect corporate reputation?
RQ2: How does corporate trust mediate this relationship?
Multiple hypotheses have been composed in order to answer all aspects of this research question (Figure 1). Existing literature emphasized the importance of establishing a favourable reputation amongst stakeholders, since there is a direct, positive relationship between corporate reputation and customer loyalty, WOM and purchase intentions (Castaldo et al, 2009; Fombrun & Shanley, 1990; Walsh & Beatty, 2007). CSR-communications have shown to affect consumer-evaluations about CSR-activities, making it a powerful tool for corporations (Castaldo et al., 2009; Gotsi & Wilson, 2001). This implies that effective communication strategies hand corporations power to indirectly affect their own corporate reputation, which will eventually lead to maximized business returns.
Since in the current digital age, social media became an important marketing- and communications channel, this research will explore the effects of different types of CSR-communication applied in the context of social media as rich media. According to the media richness theory (Daft & Lengel, 1986), media differ on the basis in which they are considered
‘rich’ media. Following this classification, social media can be seen as rich media. Interestingly, a lot of social media have the ability to be employed as lean media as well. For example, when posting a message on Facebook, users can decide for themselves whether to post plain text, incorporate a photo or even a video. This causes one post to be lean and another to be rich, even though Facebook is considered as a rich medium. Therefore, it would be a great contribution to knowledge, to explore if these different employments of rich media have different effects on corporate reputation. Hypothesis one and two are directly related to the rich versus lean application of the considered ‘rich’ social media and will test the applicability of media richness theory in a social media-specific context. Hypothesis one concerns the direct relationship between CSR-communication and corporate reputation:
H1: Greater media richness leads to higher corporate reputation.
Since CSR-behaviours have shown to indirectly affect corporate reputation, the second hypothesis relates to this indirect effect. Literature research made evident that the effect of CSR-behaviour on corporate reputation is mediated by corporate trust (Park et al., 2014). Since social media is the context of this research paper, H2a is composed to explore the generalizability of this effect to the context of social media.
H2a: The relationship between media richness and corporate reputation is mediated by trust.
In order to confirm H2a, the two direct effects that are part of this hypothesis, would have to be confirmed as well. H2b and H2c are developed to test these direct relationships. Multiple researchers confirmed that CSR-behaviour directly and positively influences corporate trust (Park, Lee & Kim, 2014; Swaen & Chumpitaz, 2009). To test generalizability and transfer of these findings, H2a will explore these effects in the context of social media-specific CSR-communication.
The third part of hypothesis two, concentrates on the direct effect of corporate trust on corporate reputation (Etter and Fieseler, 2010; Park, Lee & Kim, 2014). However, since most researchers explored corporate reputation as an antecedent rather than an outcome, it would greatly contribute to current academic knowledge to investigate this direct relationship again, in the online context of social media-specific CSR-communication.
H2c: Stronger trust leads to higher corporate reputation.
Literature research implicated that it remains unclear how content concreteness of corporations’ CSR-communication varies in affecting corporate trust and corporate reputation. Some researchers emphasize the importance of abstract CSR-communication (Wagner et al., 2009), whilst the majority of researchers found evidence concerning the importance of concrete CSR-communication (Rekom and Berens, 2008; Schmeltz, 2012; Soojong and Bae, 2016). H3a and H3b build on these findings and are proposed to explore if abstract or concrete CSR-communications are more effective, with the aim of positively affecting corporate reputation. H3a is constructed to explore how concreteness affects the direct relationship between CSR-communication and corporate reputation.
H3a. Concreteness positively moderates the relationship between media richness and corporate reputation.
The last hypothesis is developed to explore the effect of concreteness on the indirect relationship between CSR-communication and corporate reputation with corporate trust as a mediator.
H3b. Concreteness positively moderates the relationship between media richness and trust.
The way in which these hypotheses are related to one another is depicted in the conceptual framework, visually depicted in figure 1.
Figure 1. Conceptual framework
4. METHODS
This chapter will elaborate on the methods that were used for this master thesis. First, data collection methods and sample will be discussed, followed by an elaboration on the research design. After, the procedure will be explained, before elaborating on the stimulus material. Subsequently, an explanation of all measures will be given, after which the chapter will close with an elaboration on the analysis.
4.1. Sample and data collection
The general population of this research is the Western-European consumer. Since research has shown that CSR-communications are different across Europe as compared to the U.S., but also to China and Russia (Hartman, Rubin & Dhanda, 2007), the effects of these communications on corporate reputations are supposedly different for these countries too. Therefore, the general population is defined as ‘the Western-European consumer’, causing consumers from other places to be disregarded in this research.
Data was collected using online survey software Qualtrics. Main sampling techniques consisted of non-probability sampling methods. The main techniques that were used were self-selection sampling, snowball-sampling and convenience sampling, since participants were mainly recruited using the researcher’s own network. Participants were approached through Facebook and email. On Facebook, participants were approached through an open Facebook message on the researcher’s own Facebook page, in which readers were asked to take part in an anonymous survey through the attached link. That same message was posted on five Facebook pages that were set up with the aims of exchanging surveys amongst students. These closed groups all consisted of students following higher education (academic as well as college background) in the Netherlands and in need of participants for their surveys. Possible participants that were approached through email, were all part of the researcher’s own network. The email contained a textual message in which the relations were asked to fill in the anonymous link attached in the email with the aims of helping her graduate. All possible participants received the same anonymous link to the Qualtrics page of the experiment, causing anonymity could indeed be guaranteed.
In total, 206 participants with ages ranging from 17 to 79 (M = 29.24, SD = 11.31), took part in the experiment. Since sampling techniques consisted of self-selection sampling the amount of people that were exposed to the message on Facebook is hard to determine. When calculating with only the 350 directly approached individuals, response rate was 69%. Out of all participants, 139 were female: (67,5%), 66 were male (32%) and one classified itself as other (0,5%). Most participants had higher educational backgrounds: 98 participants were currently enrolled in- or finished with a University Master (47,6%), 53 (25,76%) enrolled in- or finished with a University Bachelor’s and 36 (17,5%) enrolled in- or finished with an HBO Bachelor.
4.2. Research design
This research was employed using an experimental vignette methodology, making it possible to look at causal links between variables (Aguinis & Bradley, 2014). The benefits of experimental vignette methods are that they offer the possibility to combine the high external validity that survey methods offer, with the high internal validity caused by experimental design (Aguinis & Bradley, 2014). These methods were particularly suited to this research since they opt possibilities to manipulate the independent variable media richness, as well as the moderator concreteness, which allowed to infer causal relationships. The research was carried out making use of online survey software Qualtrics, making it easy for participants to participate in the experiment. This was beneficial to the response-rate, since the experiment could be carried out on desktop in the context of participants’ home or work, but also through smartphones whilst participants were on-the-go in the train or bus for example. Therefore, there was a low barrier for participants to join in on the research, especially since anonymous participation was guaranteed.
The research design consisted of a 2 (richness: lean/rich) X 2 (style: concrete/abstract) between-subjects experimental design, causing four different conditions or groups participants could be assigned to (Table 1). Conditions differed on the basis of type of stimulus participants were exposed to. Each participant was randomly assigned to one of four groups and therefore exposed to only one out of four different types of stimuli that were designed. All questions (excluding the question about the demographic variable ‘age’) in the survey consisted of closed fixed-response questions. An overview of all questions in the survey can be found under Appendix 1.
