Toward an Audience-Centric Framework of Corporate Social Advocacy Strategy: An Exploratory Study of Young Consumers from Generation Z

Abstract

Increasingly, business-to-consumer companies engage in corporate social advocacy (CSA) to respond to growing pressures from stakeholders. CSA studies are quickly accumulating, yet in-depth explanations of when and why the public expect companies to take a stance (sometimes even action) on controversial issues remain scarce. To fill these gaps, we unpack how Generation Z audiences expect companies to act on public agendas and their reasoning process through a mixed-method analysis of an exploratory survey (N = 388) conducted at a public university. The results show major changes in CSA expectations and illuminate the reasoning behind them. The results highlight a critical need to further understand CSA from audience perceptions and inform message design and testing guided by audience-centric models.