Consumer’s attitude to moral framed advertisements when brands are taking stand on socio-environmental issues
(A2022-107153)

AUTHORS

Babak Sarabi, UiT the Arctic University of Norway; Anders Wien, UiT the Arctic University of Norway; Tarje Gaustad, BI Norwegian Business School

ABSTRACT

What will be the reaction among the consumers when the company takes a stand on the socio-environmental issue and communicate this position through its advertisement message arguing for what it considers as right and positioning against what it considers as wrong? This paper investigates the causal effect of framing advertisement messages as moral ideal vs. moral obligation through an experimental design. Moreover, the mediating effect of pride and guilt caused by this type of Ad framing will be further investigated to clarify how these constructs mediate the effect on consumers’ attitudes to brand, advertisement (Ad), and consumers’ eWOM. The results show that moral ideal (obligation) framed ad is more (less) effective on consumers with a high (low) agreement to the cause in terms of attitude to Brand, Ad, and eWOM, moreover this effect is fully mediated by the higher (lower) level of Pride, for consumers with a high agreement to the cause.