EXPRESS: Taking a Stance, For Now or Forever: Optimizing the Communication of Corporate Political Activism

When engaging in corporate political activism (CPA), firms can use different cues (e.g., language and medium choices) to establish the permanence of their activism communications. Across six studies spanning a wide range of timely sociopolitical issues, the current research provides insights into how consumers respond to the relative permanence of a firm’s CPA communications. We show that more permanent (vs. temporary) CPA communications, as might be shared on a firm’s website, social media posts, or retail displays, signal greater firm commitment to the advocated issue, which in turn generates more positive downstream outcomes. Consistent with a mechanism grounded in firm commitment perceptions, the positive impact of communication permanence is attenuated in the presence of other diagnostic signals of firm commitment. Furthermore, we explore whether individual differences might influence consumer responses to such communication permanence, yielding two interrelated insights. First, firm commitment perceptions stemming from permanent CPA communications have a stronger effect on firm outcomes when consumers’ ideology aligns with the stance the firm takes. Second, holding stance alignment constant, the impact of CPA communication permanence appears more pronounced among liberal consumers, who react more strongly to cues of lower firm commitment (e.g., temporary communications).