Consumer Responses to Corporate and Celebrity Philanthropy

Abstract

Philanthropic activities have gained paramount importance in today’s world. The purpose of this paper is twofold. Firstly, the authors propose a model to comprehend the process of philanthropy (corporate as well as celebrity) in creating word of mouth intentions (hereafter WoM). Secondly, it attempts to explore the interaction effects of these philanthropies on WoM intentions. A structural equation model is tested in a sample of 400 FMCG consumers in Pakistan. The results confirm that both corporate and celebrity philanthropy directly and positively affect WoM intentions. However, their interaction effect is found to be insignificant on WoM intentions. This study has meaningful implications that involving philanthropic celebrities in corporate philanthropy-based advertisements may garner favorable consumers’ WoM intentions. It lies among the pioneering studies to empirically investigate the understudied model of corporate and celebrity philanthropy in order to understand the creation of WoM intentions.