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This study aims to explain why low social conduct in corporate social responsibility (SC-CSR), especially employee exploitation, has a stronger negative impact on consumer reactions for service firms than for manufacturing firms.

Five experiments compared consumer reactions to service and manufacturing firms with low SC-CSR. Study 1 used a choice-based conjoint design to examine the relative importance of various shared attributes when consumers chose services versus goods. Study 2 revealed that low SC-CSR led to more pronounced negative consumers reactions toward service firms. Studies 3A and 3B explained this difference through a serial mediation analysis. Study 4 ruled out an alternative explanation regarding the differentiated effects.

The results reveal that consumer reactions to employee exploitation in service firms are more negative compared to manufacturing firms. This is because consumers’ sense of presence (i.e. feeling of being there) is stronger in a service setting, leading to more intense empathetic emotions toward service employees.

This research contributes to the CSR literature by challenging the conventional notion that sweatshops are more problematic for manufacturing firms. By contrast, the results indicate a stronger negative effect on service firms. It contributes to the services marketing literature by conceptualizing a novel cognitive mechanism. Traditionally, consumers’ negative reactions are driven by anger. However, the authors show that empathetic feelings toward mistreated employees play a predominant role. While it is imperative for all firms to ensure fair treatment of their employees, the findings underscore the heightened significance of this aspect for service firms, given their susceptibility to more pronounced negative effects.

The purpose of this paper is to propose and test a conceptual framework of attitudinal constructs that influence attitude toward the brand in movie product placements. Advertising literature is replete with studies on factors that influence attitude toward the brand (A_b). However, this topic remains under-explored for product placements.

Our framework showcases several theories to relate attitude and fit constructs to attitudes toward the product placement and attitude toward the brand. We use the structural equation model approach to estimate the conceptual framework.

Several attitudinal movie constructs (attitude toward the actor, the character and the movie) influence attitude toward the product placement, which in turn mediates the relationship between the former attitudinal constructs and attitude toward the brand. Interestingly, only the fit between the actor and placed brand impacted attitude toward the product placement, with no effects found for the fit between the character and the fit between the movie and brand and the attitude toward the product placement.

We focus on explicit attitudes; implicit attitudes need future research attention.

Findings affirm a key role for the actor featured in the placement in directly or indirectly shaping the attitude toward the brand.

This is the first study to apply the structural equation modeling approach to this research area.