Proactive vs. Reactive: How Brands Engage in Corporate Socio-political Activism Across Social Issues

As brands increasingly engage in Corporate Sociopolitical Activism (CSA), additional conceptual clarity is needed. For example, we know little about whether and how proactive engagement, compared to reactive engagement in CSA, influences consumer responses and how the specific issue of interest may moderate these responses. We leverage existing theories to develop a conceptual framework that distinguishes between proactive CSA that is pre-planned and reactive CSA that is in response to a major socio-political event. Using 271,316 tweets from 668 brands in 2020, we examine how engagement with proactive and reactive CSA differs across three socio-political issues (racial justice, COVID-19, and political landscape). We find that social media users respond differently to proactive and reactive CSA on racial justice and COVID-19 issues, but not on political landscape issues. Across the three social issues, engagement with both proactive and reactive tweets varies significantly. In addition, we find that prior issue participation, social media activity, and brand size moderate these relationships. An experimental study indicates that prior issue participation increases intentions to like a tweet, perceptions of brand sincerity, and connectedness to the brand.

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility, Social Media Marketing, Twitter, X

JEL Classification: M3

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Taylor, Wayne and Crabbe, Rowena and Thomas, Jacquelyn S. and Chintagunta, Pradeep K., Proactive vs. Reactive: How Brands Engage in Corporate Socio-political Activism Across Social Issues (November 9, 2023). SMU Cox School of Business Research Paper No. 23-08, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4473758 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4473758