Mobilizing consumers through corporate political advocacy: how social-focus value congruence shapes corporate virtuous character

PurposeAdvocating for social values lies in the core domain of corporate political advocacy. However, little is known regarding whether consumers can capture the core values that companies project through their corporate political advocacy efforts, or how the perceived core values affect consumers’ perceptual evaluation and behavioral responses. This study aims to examine how value congruence between a company and its consumers motivates consumer support for the company's political advocacy stance. Design/methodology/approachUsing a two-wave longitudinal survey, this study examined how shared benevolence-caring and universalism-concern affected consumers’ assessment of corporate political advocacy.FindingsThe results revealed that congruent social-focus values (benevolence-caring and universalism-concern) were positively associated with supportive behaviors when consumers felt shared responsibility for the betterment of the sentiment community.Originality/valueThrough a longitudinal approach and the normative lens of value congruence and shared responsibility, the study demonstrates the importance of building a company’s virtuous character and ethical persona with benevolence-caring and universalism-concern via corporate political advocacy, for example, showing concerns not only for stakeholders but more importantly, the public interests of the broad society, helps to increase consumers’ identification with the company.