Digital Brand Activism and Collective Action: Mapping Challenges and Strategies

Abstract

Digital brand activism is a growing phenomenon in advertising and marketing. This conceptual paper advances this emergent literature by examining firms’ implementation of brand activism on social media and consumers’ varied reactions. It highlights the benefits of social media as the primary vehicle for campaign dissemination, as well as its propensity to amplify criticisms and polarization. However, the unique contributions of digital brand activism to the broader societal agenda remain underexplored. We propose collective action as the primary goal for change-oriented digital brand activism and underscore the significance of outcome expectancy in achieving this goal, offering a clear pathway for mobilizing consumers and demonstrating how individual contributions can be pooled to create significant social impact. We adopt the theory synthesis approach to summarize and integrate knowledge to advance a framework that identifies (1) key challenges that arise for digital brand activism, and (2) corresponding literature-informed strategies to overcome these challenges and achieve collective action.