44 The Urge to Splurge companies can best advertise their products to stimulate ethical consumption. The effectiveness of advertising co-depends on how messages are framed (Waymer, Gilliland, & Barbour, 2020). Companies embedding sustainability in their strategies have the possibility to choose between (at least) two types of advertising frames: self-benefit advertising frames, which communicate the benefits for the consumer (e.g., ‘These chocolates will make you happier’), versus other-benefit advertising frames, which communicate that the main beneficiary of the purchase is someone or something other than the consumer (e.g., Fisher, Vandenbosch, & Kersi, 2008; Sattler et al., 2020; Kim et al., 2021), such as the social or environmental cause that the company supports (e.g., ‘These chocolates empower cacao farmers’). There is a growing body of literature that recognizes that the two types of advertising frames elicit various responses (e.g., Ryoo, Sung, & Chechelnytska, 2020). However, there is no consensus on which appeal is the most effective or what mechanisms explain their effects (e.g., Yadav, 2016; Jäger & Weber, 2020). All types of companies can use self-benefit advertisements to promote their goods. However, using other-benefit advertisements that focus on their contribution to society seems pre-eminently appropriate for sustainability-driven companies. Naturally, this is only an advantage for such companies if other-benefit frames appear to be more effective than self-benefit frames. This research specifically focuses on the aforementioned, thereby responding to the call for more research on advertising appeals in corporate social responsibility (Taylor, 2018). More specifically, this study examines the effects of other-benefit advertising frames (versus self-benefit frames) on consumers’ impulse purchase urges and behaviors. A major part of consumption behavior entails impulse purchases (Thürmer, Bieleke, & Wieber, 2020). For example, people from the United States spend, on average, US$ 450 monthly on products they did not plan to buy but somehow eagerly wanted in the spur of the moment (Slickdeals, 2018). Therefore, increasing impulse purchases can help sustainability-driven companies to strengthen their competitive positions (cf. Mehra, Kumar, & Raju, 2017). Impulse buying, especially impulsively purchasing hedonic products, requires justification to feel good about the purchase (Okada, 2005; Warden, Wu, &Tsai, 2006). Both self-benefit and other-benefit frames have the potential to offer such justifications to the consumer. Therefore, we also study the extent to which justification explains the proposed effect of advertising frames on impulse buying. Moreover, insights into justification processes arguably help us to further understand advertising frame effectiveness. Justification entails finding reasons for one’s actions (Park & Hill, 2018), and it can offer consolation to consumers who buy on impulse (Warden, Wu, & Tsai, 2006). We distinguish between two types of justifications in this study. First, deservingness justification, which is proposedly elicited by self-benefit frames, is defined as all types of justifications that are related to why someone might deserve to engage in impulse buying. Second, moral justification, which is proposedly elicited by other-benefit frames, is defined as the use of moral or pro-social reasons to justify ones’ impulse purchases. Deservingness justification is not new to the marketing and psychology literature (e.g., Cavanaugh, 2014). However, this study is the first to examine moral justification in the context of sustainability management and advertising framing. Studying moral justification as an explanation mechanism in the effect of advertising frames on impulse buying can arguably provide further insights into how
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