EXPRESS: Socio-Political Activism, Brand Personality, and Social Media Engagement

The growing literature on brand activism highlights its increasing relevance in marketing but offers a offers limited insight into how consumers respond to different types of activism. Addressing this gap, we distinguish between social and political brand activism and examine how consumer engagement varies across these contexts. Our analysis of 1.7 million social media posts from 269 corporate accounts over a decade (2012-2022) reveals that social and political activism evoke divergent consumer responses. Social activism is on average associated with greater consumer engagement. In contrast, the relationship between political activism and engagement is significantly moderated by brand competence, with brands perceived as competent achieving greater engagement when sharing political messages. We supplement our observational study with a controlled experiment which both provides causal evidence consistent with the role of brand competence in shaping engagement with activist content and reveals that self-brand connection as a key psychological mechanism driving engagement with activist content. These findings advance the literature on brand activism by demonstrating that activism is not a homogeneous construct and by deepening understanding of how consumers engage with brands' social and political expressions.