As competitive pressures in a company’s external environment escalate, brand differentiation becomes increasingly important. In response, strategies incorporating a variety of combinations of the marketing mix may be employed. However, using corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives as a measure of strengthening the brand is a recent and under explored development in marketing strategy (Kitchin 2003). For example, recent research suggests that the positive brand implications resulting from CSR investments are a valid but rarely used source of competitive advantage (Melo and Galan 2011). In response, the present research examines the impact of CSR initiatives from a consumer behavior perspective. In the context of the apparel industry, we build upon prior examinations of CSR (Klein and Dawar 2004; Becker-Olsen, Cudmore, and Hill 2006) and provide insight into how a business’s socially responsible activities may (or may not) be effectively communicated to enhance a brand for which consumers are willing to pay more.

Grounded in the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM; Petty and Cacioppo 1979, 1986a, 1986b), this study takes an experimental approach to examine the role of multidimensionality in CSR rating and its impact on brand attitude, brand equity, and two measures of purchasing behavior. Specifically, this research explores the effects on purchase decisions when only one dimension of CSR (eg,“overall” or “human rights”) is favorably rated, and thus attempts to answer a call for specific focus on the “de facto enslavement of workers”(Byrne 2011, p. 507). We find that the human rights sub-dimension of CSR has influence on behavior that is unique from an overall CSR performance score. Given the connotations elicited when considering the apparel industry coupled with the human rights sub-dimension of social responsibility, we expect effects on brand perceptions and purchase decisions to be significantly lower for a low human rights rating than for a low overall CSR rating. Additionally, we demonstrate that the path of CSR performance to consumer behavior is mediated by CSR’s impact on brand equity. Altogether, the CSR è Brand equity è Consumer behavior path suggests that companies should consider the industry in which they operate, and selectively invest firm resources toward appropriate sub-dimensions of CSR in order to maximize its effectiveness and impact on consumer purchasing outcomes.