43 Chapter 3 Abstract: Today, consumers expect companies to be socially responsible. However, the literature is undecided about the effects of communicating one’s corporate social responsibility activities to consumers. This raises the question of how sustainability-driven companies can best advertise their products to stimulate ethical consumption: using self-benefit frames, where the main beneficiary is the consumer, or using other-benefit frames, where the main beneficiary is a third party. Using three experiments, this study examines the effect of other-benefit (versus self-benefit) advertising frames on consumers’ impulse purchases from sustainability-driven companies. Increasing impulse purchases can help such companies to strengthen their competitive positions. Additionally, the extent to which the two types of justifications (moral versus deservingness) explain the proposed effect of advertising frames. The results show that only other-benefit frames affect impulse buying behavior, both directly, as mediated by moral justification. This study’s insights may help sustainability-driven companies to decide on their advertising strategies by providing evidence that other-benefit-framed advertisements are more effective in enhancing impulse purchases than self-benefit-framed advertisements. Introduction “If your brand isn’t helping your consumers improve their environmental and social footprint, then you’re in danger of disappointing 88% of them” (Townsend, 2018). Today, an increasing number of consumers expect companies to be socially responsible. As a response, the number of companies that have started corporate social responsibility initiatives have increased massively (Coleman, Royne, & Pounders, 2019; Taylor, 2018). Corporate social responsibility initiatives can be described as a company’s contribution to society and/or environment, instead of harming them, while increasing its revenues (see Green & Peloza, 2011; Nan and Heo, 2007). Therefore, such initiatives are part of the more comprehensive concept of sustainability management, which is defined as “the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of both environmental and socioeconomic sustainability-related decisions and actions” (Starik and Kanashiro, 2013, p. 12). Although consumers are inclined to value companies’ sustainability-related initiatives (Coleman, Royne, & Pounders, 2019; Diehl, Terlutter, & Mueller, 2015; Casalegno, Candelo, & Santoro, 2022), not all sustainability-driven companies are successful. The overall market share of ethical products is relatively low (d’Astous & Legendre, 2009), few consumers want to learn about a product’s ethical qualities (Zane, Irwin, & Reczek, 2016), and companies’ publicity and advertisements about their sustainability initiatives are often perceived as insincere, ethically doubtful, or even as a manipulative trick to sell over-priced products (Barone, 2000; d’Astous, Carrillat, & Przybysz, 2020). Especially, people with an individualistic mindset, who are not uncommon in countries such as the United States of America, Great Britain, and the Netherlands, can be skeptical of corporate philanthropy (Chang & Cheng, 2015). Summarily, “(...) just because we are seeing more of these [sustainability] appeals does not necessarily mean they are effective” (Taylor, 2018, p. 338). This raises the question of how sustainability-driven
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