Impact of a corporate social responsibility message on consumers' sustainable behaviours and purchase intentions

This study investigates the impact of a water brand's CSR message highlighting the brand's environmental concerns on brand-related variables (attitude towards the brand and CSR) and consumer-related variables (consumer efforts to adopt sustainable behaviours and well-being). A research model is proposed, and the relationships postulated are tested on 414 French consumers. The study establishes the effectiveness of this kind of CSR messaging in influencing French consumers to purchase and recommend a particular brand. It then shows the direct and indirect ways in which a brand's CSR messaging can improve consumers' behavioural intentions (i.e., intentions to purchase the brand's products and to recommend the brand and/or its products). It also underscores that brand-related variables contribute to increasing brands', and thus companies', business performance, whereas consumer-related variables contribute to increasing their social performance. Finally, the REBUS-PLS method emphasises the existence of several consumer groups and identifies the core target customer groups on which companies should focus their communication efforts.