What Holds Ethical Consumers to a Cosmetics Brand

Abstract

Increasing numbers of brands position having corporate social responsibility (CSR) as their founding ideology. This article examines what makes ethical consumers develop a loyalty to CSR-led brands, using a questionnaire survey of The Body Shop consumers. Contrary to some existing work in marketing, the consumer self-brand congruence on the ethical character did not have a significant impact on brand identification, with the exception of the empathy virtue character. The structural equation modeling of the data confirms that the citizenship image of the brand is influenced by brand identification, which in turn is influenced by the empathy virtue congruence. Ironically, in the case of The Body Shop, while the empathy congruence is the most important indicator for consumer identification and citizenship image, the gap on the empathy virtue was the largest. If customers with a high-empathy character see a CSR-led brand lacking empathy, consumer loyalty will be reduced. The managerial implications of the findings are discussed.

Keywords

brand citizenship empathy virtue congruence

I absolutely think . . . all colour or complexion added to our skins or faces, beyond what is purely natural, to be a sin.

John Gauden, 1662, p. 7

The dictionary definition of “cosmetic” still carries a negative meaning of “non-essential,” “inessential,” and “superficial” (The Oxford English Dictionary, 2007). Historically, the image of cosmetics has carried the “original sin” label and has been associated with unethical images. In 17th- and 18th-century literature, Christian writers such as John Gauden (1662) wrote that it is a sin to mask nature, the divine gift given by God. Cosmetics in the 1800s were viewed as vulgar, something worn by prostitutes, which led Queen Victoria publicly to declare make-up “impolite” (Pallingston, 1998). The cosmetics industry started to develop in the 20th century and the demand for cosmetics increased dramatically after the two World Wars, as they were seen as one way of revitalizing the human spirit. Since then a number of different ethical issues associated with cosmetics have emerged, for example, the protection of the environment, the use of chemical ingredients in production processes, and animal rights. Today, more and more cosmetics brands use an ethical platform as their marketing slogan and try to engage consumers with favorable, ethical, and distinctive image of their brand by promoting similarity between their consumers and the brand.

Marketing literature has argued that brand preference is influenced by the perception of how similar the personality of the brand is to that of the perceiver (Kassarjian, 1971). For example, a man who considers himself rugged and masculine ought to prefer Marlboro cigarettes, whereas a woman who considers herself attractive, modern, and liberated ought to prefer Virginia Slims. Using the customer self-brand congruence theory, marketers have capitalized on this response pattern by creating distinctive brand images to fit the self-image of different types of customers. This branding strategy is because when a consumer buys a product, he or she buys not only the functional benefits but also the reputation, prestige, symbols, and social meanings associated with the image of the brand. Customers make purchase decisions partly based on a product’s symbolic meaning and image, which are used to maintain or enhance their own self-image (Levy, 1959). The consumer self-brand image congruence theory has been popular among both marketing practitioners and academics as one important factor that influences favorable evaluation of a brand.

Cosmetics brands strive to create a brand image similar to (congruent with) the self-image of their target consumers (Aaker & Biel, 1993). For example, Revlon, which had long targeted older women with advertising campaigns featuring the late Audrey Hepburn, decided to reposition its image to appeal to younger women by using younger actresses. Today, increasing numbers of cosmetics brands try to attract consumers by promoting ethical values, in particular, the similarity between their consumers and the brand. However, the idea has rarely been tested on a corporate social responsibility (CSR)-led brand which appeals specifically to ethical consumers. The target consumers of CSR-led cosmetics brands in particular are supposedly those consumers who share a similar ethical personality and values to those attributes of the brand. Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, states,

The Body Shop is a global operation with thousands of people working towards common goals and sharing common values. That’s what has given it a campaigning and commercial strength and continues to set it apart from mainstream business. (Roddick, 2006)

Roddick implies that the level of similarity (or congruence) between the ethical character of the consumer and the ethical character of the brand should lead to beneficial outcomes in the market. If the brand-consumer personality congruence theory is applied to the virtue congruence, ethically positioned brands which are seen as being honest, for example, will be more likely to receive a favorable evaluation from consumers who also possess the virtue of honesty. The work reported here reveals how the self-brand virtue congruence is linked to consumer emotional attachment and citizenship image.

The article first introduces virtue ethics as useful theory in testing the congruence level between the consumers’ own and the brand’s ethical character, and its impact on consumer identification and citizenship image. Three hypotheses are then proposed and tested.

Virtue Character Theory

A firm’s ethical values stem from virtues (Solomon, 1992). Virtues contribute to making us the persons we are and presuppose values, part of the spiritual essence of a person (Whetstone, 2001). Increasingly, the literature supports the proposition that consumers are willing to pay more for a brand which is perceived to be ethical. Cause-related marketing is one example where companies actually believe that their engagement with a good cause, such as a charity, can potentially result in customer loyalty and therefore growing market share (Mullen, 1997). CSR-led brands or companies tend to project certain organizational virtue characters that their stakeholders can appreciate. For example, charitable non-profit organizations tend to be perceived as having integrity and thoughtfulness (e.g., they are honest, reliable, and caring; Venable, Rose, Bush, & Gilbert, 2005).

Virtues are personality traits that are particularly relevant to the virtuous or ethical behaviors of persons or organizations. According to this author’s recent work on the scale development of organizational virtues (Chun, 2005), an organization’s ethical character can be represented by six dimensions of virtue: integrity, empathy, courage, warmth, zeal, and conscientiousness (see Figure 1). This scale is the only organizational virtue measure validated on both employees’ and customers’ samples, and hence is used in this study.

Figure 1.

Virtue ethical character scale.

Integrity is one of the most frequently used corporate values. Integrity is represented by character traits such as honest, sincere, social responsible, and trustworthy. A person of good character, or an ethical person, regularly and consistently exhibits character traits that are in keeping with certain principles: honesty, fairness, reliability, trustworthiness, and commitment to others (Paine, 1991). Both empathy (concern, reassuring, supportive, and sympathetic) and warmth (friendly, pleasant, open, and straightforward) are particularly important ethical characters for service businesses (Zeithaml, Parasuraman, & Berry, 1990).

Courage in the business world is defined as “success in achieving the desired outcome” by being ambitious, achievement-oriented, leading, and competent. Zeal, unlike other moral virtues, represents non-obligatory virtue traits such as exciting, innovative, imaginative, and spirited. The value of “fun” has become increasingly popular in modern corporations, both for internal and external stakeholders. A brand such as Wal-Mart is perceived as caring, trustworthy, respected, and friendly but not exciting and fun (Henderson & Mihas, 2000).

Conscientiousness is one of the “Big Five” human personality factors and is characterized as being reliable, hardworking, proud, and secure (Barrick & Mount, 1991). (The other four factors are agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness.) The six dimensions of ethical character were validated against both humans and companies, enabling comparison of the ethical aspects of consumers’ self-image and brand image directly, which is the approach taken in this study. This article tests whether the virtue character congruence is a key variable in building an ethical image for a CSR-led brand. Despite the growing interest in using such an ethical proposition as a marketing platform in the cosmetics market, the congruence theory, focusing on the ethical character of consumers, has not been tested on cosmetics brands (Shaw, 2005). Hence Hypothesis 1 is proposed as follows:

Hypothesis 1: The more similar consumers perceive a CSR-led brand’s virtue character to be to their own, the more favorable the evaluation they are likely to make of the brand’s citizenship image.

Consumer Identification

In the 1990s, a large body of relationship marketing literature tried to identify how companies can build loyalty (Reichheld, 1996) and an emotional bond with their customers (Fournier, 1998). Organizational identification, defined as a person’s feeling of oneness with, or emotional attachment to, an organization (Ashforth & Mael, 1989) developed originally from sociology and was adapted to employee identification in organizational behavior literature. Marketing scholars recognized the powerful role of identification between corporate brands and their consumers. Customer identification then refers to a customer’s feeling of oneness, or emotional attachment to, a brand. More recently, the concept of a consumer’s identification with or emotional attachment to a brand (Bhattacharya & Sen, 2003) and word of mouth (Ahearne, Bhattacharya, & Gruen, 2005) have emerged as important indicators for customer loyalty for CSR-led brands. CSR-led brands are conscious of developing citizenship image which refers to an ethical image specially for being a good citizen (Maignan & Ferrell, 2004). The level of emotional attachment that consumers have to a brand is expected to play an important role in building the ethical image of the brand, but it has rarely been tested on CSR-led brands. Therefore Hypothesis 2 is proposed, to test whether the more consumers identify themselves with an ethically positioned brand, the more they see the brand as being ethical.

Hypothesis 2: The higher the level of consumer-brand identification, the more favorable the evaluations of a brand’s citizenship image consumers make.

Conversely, consumers may boycott a product made by an unethical company as part of their dis-identification process (Sen, Gürhan-Canli, & Morwitz, 2001). Dis-identification occurs when individuals perceive a gap between their own defining attributes and the attributes characterizing the organization (Bhattacharya & Elsbach, 2002; Elsbach & Bhattacharya, 2001). It is unclear whether identification drives ethical image, or ethical image drives identification. It would be interesting to test which of the two mirrored relationships is stronger in the context of a CSR-led brand.

Existing research highlights antecedents of organizational identification with CSR-led brands. As stakeholders perceive that key organizational characters are in congruence with their self-identity, they are likely to identify with the organization (Maignan & Ferrell, 2004). The integrity virtue in particular has received most attention in the literature, in relation to customer identification with CSR-led brands. For example, Bhattacharya and Sen (2003) suggested that the perceived trustworthiness of a company will influence a customer’s identification with that company. In the context of charity organizations, the virtues of trust and honesty are known to be attributed to the effective use of funds and provision of services for the donors, but their links to identification were not tested (Venable et al., 2005). There is one article which found a significant link between organizational character traits (innovative, progressive, socially responsible, and sensitive) and identification in the CSR context (Ahearne et al., 2005) but the link was seen from the employee’s (i.e., salesperson’s) perspective. The scale used for organizational character includes the integrity virtue (e.g., trustworthy) but the context was not specific to ethical characters. In short, existing research has not tested empirically the virtue (ethical character) congruence as an antecedent to consumer identification, and therefore Hypothesis 3 is proposed:

Hypothesis 3: The more similar consumers perceive a CSR-led brand virtue character to be to their own, the higher the level of consumer-brand identification.

Based on the above discussion, Figure 2 depicts a conceptual framework with three proposed hypotheses.

Figure 2.

Conceptual framework.

Method

This section explains the empirical setting, sample, and measures used in this study.

Empirical Setting

The aim of the research was to study the role of consumers’ perception of their own virtue character and that of the brand as a CSR-led cosmetics brand. The reason for choosing the cosmetics sector has been explained elsewhere in the article; cosmetics brands have an ethical image problem derived from the nature of the industry itself. Cosmetics brands are also regarded as being differentiated by the image they create through their advertising campaigns, so positioning a cosmetics brand mainly as an ethically led brand should only work if its consumers believe in it. The empirical setting for the research is The Body Shop, the first cosmetics brand founded in the United Kingdom to be based on an ethical philosophy. The Body Shop was chosen for the distinctiveness of its ideology relevant to the research, for its claim to emphasis on integrity and empathy virtues in its value system, and for its emphasis on building emotional attachment to its consumers (Martin, Knopoff, & Beckman, 1998).

The Body Shop, founded in 1976 by Anita Roddick, rose to prominence during the 1980s. One of the common goals of using ethical platform for those firms is to differentiate themselves from their competitors in similar business. In doing so, the company created a whole new market. But the company lost ground in the 1990s as mainstream competitors also began to sell natural, herbal-based products, undercutting Body Shop sales. For example, the Aveda beauty brand was launched in 1979 with a single product—an organic clove shampoo. Eighteen years later, Aveda was acquired by Estee Lauder for £175 million, and has been one of the fastest-growing beauty brands in the market place. Its rise has sparked a small revolution in similar ethical beauty ranges, including Just Pure and Green People, as well as prompted more mainstream chains such as Marks & Spencer to launch beauty ranges using recycled packaging and claiming to use only organically grown ingredients.

Despite pioneering an ethical stance for business, CSR-led brands were often criticized as “green capitalists” whose claims differed from reality, as seen, for example, in Ben & Jerry’s rainforest nut outsourcing and salary inequalities, and The Body Shop’s animal testing and lack of fair trade practices. The Body Shop had to pull out some of the marketing slogans about its products, such as “not tested on animals,” which was replaced with “against animal testing,” and “natural,” which was eventually replaced with “naturally based” (Bavaria, Becker, & Billenness, 1994; Entine, 1997).

The Body Shop was finally acquired by L’Oréal, for £652 million in March 2006. When the acquisition was announced, shares in The Body Shop surged by more than 10% toward the 300 pence mark offered by L’Oréal. Three years earlier the share price had been as low as 56.5 pence (“L’Oréal Buys Body Shop for £652m,” 2006), but consumer reaction was negative and media headlined “Body Shop’s Popularity Plunges After L’Oréal Sale” (2006) and “Did green goddess Anita Roddick sell out when she sold up to L’Oréal?” (2007). This reaction is not only due to the new ownership but also due to its links with allegedly the most boycotted company in Britain, Nestlé, which owned 26% of L’Oréal (“When Big Business Bites,” 2006). Therefore, the obviously desirable outcome for CSR-led brands is the development of an ethical image for being a good citizen.

Sample

A total of 317 questionnaires were collected, using a snowball sampling technique, from university students and their families and friends who had experience of The Body Shop as customers. The data collection was carried out by master’s students at a U.K.-based business school, as part of their assessed work for two courses: Research Methods and Corporate Branding. The respondents’ profile seemed reasonably balanced and representative of the Body Shop customers: 60% were female and 60% fell within the 16 to 24 age group, which mainly reflected the university students and their friends. The Body Shop products target younger people and appeal to student populations better than the traditional cosmetics brands. The Body Shop UK has been running a unique “Teenage Cancer Trust” campaign through their homepage. Most of their products are affordable for the students, tends to fall below 25 pounds with their best selling products priced below 10 pounds (www.thebodyshop.co.uk). The research was conducted shortly before L’Oréal’s takeover was announced, and before the death of founder Anita Roddick, so there was no bias in consumer evaluation due to major organizational change.

Measures

Virtue congruence, the consumer-brand image congruence on virtue character, is measured using six dimensions and 24 associated items of the virtue ethical character scale (Figure 1). Respondents were asked to rate their own image and that of The Body Shop on the 24 ethical character items using a 5-point Likert-type scale (from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). The congruence level was then calculated as the absolute differences between matching virtue items and dimensions of their own virtue and the brand virtue items. In other words, the level of virtue congruence was measured as consumers’ ratings of their own virtue item minus their ratings of the brand virtue items on the six dimensions.

Consumer-Brand Identification was measured using statements such as “I feel an affinity with The Body Shop” and “I am pleased to be associated with The Body Shop.”

Citizenship was assessed using three items, namely, the consumer’s perception of whether The Body Shop “plays a role in our society that goes beyond the mere generation of profits,” “allocates some of their resources to philanthropic activities,” and “helps social problems.” These items represent corporate discretionary citizenship that is directly relevant to consumers of cosmetics. They exclude any economic, legal, or ethical responsibilities aimed to assess the views of employees (Maignan, Ferrell, & Hult, 1999). Respondents were asked to agree or disagree with these statements on a 5-point Likert-type scale. Alpha for each construct was more than .7, demonstrating an acceptable level of reliability of these constructs. This reliability means that the items measuring each construct have good internal consistency. The data analysis was conducted in two stages. The descriptive and correlational analyses were carried out using SPSS for an overview of the relationship between two constructs proposed in the hypotheses, followed by the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) using AMOS to test the model fit.

Findings

This research reveals three key findings. First, contrary to assumptions made in the marketing literature, the consumer self-brand personality congruence in the context of virtue ethical character (hence, virtue congruence) had limited influence on customers’ favorable evaluation of the brand. The relationship between virtue congruence, which is measured as the level of dissimilarity (or gap) between brand and consumer character, and favorable evaluations was generally negative, as expected, and insignificant except for two major virtue character dimensions: integrity and empathy (see Table 1). Hypothesis 1, linking self-brand virtue congruence and citizenship image, is then partially supported on integrity and empathy virtue dimensions.

Table 1.

Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations.

	M	SD	Gap-integrity	Gap-empathy	Gap-courage	Gap-warmth	Gap-zeal	Gap-conscientiousness	Citizenship
Gap-integrity	0.57	.51
Gap-empathy	0.61	.53	.42**
Gap-courage	0.61	.53	.11	.18**
Gap-warmth	0.50	.45	.22**	.23**	.14*
Gap-zeal	0.59	.46	.12*	.21**	.27**	.21**
Gap-conscientiousness	0.53	.45	.22**	.18**	.08	.14*	.13*
Citizenship	3.22	.72	−.17**	−.14*	.03	−.10	.03	.01
Identification	3.08	.76	−.10	−.22**	−.03	−.09	.02	−.009	.34**

Correlation is significant at the .05 level (two-tailed). **Correlation is significant at the .01 level (two-tailed).

Table 1 indicates that integrity and empathy differ in the level of their impact on consumer evaluation. While the empathy congruence (concerned, reassuring supportive, and sympathetic) was significantly correlated with both citizenship (r = −.14) and identification (r = −.22), the integrity congruence (honest, sincere, socially responsible, and trustworthy) was correlated only to citizenship image (r = −.17), and not identification (r = −.10). Hypothesis 3, linking self-brand virtue congruence to identification, was supported only on empathy virtue dimension. The congruence on all the other virtue ethical character dimensions, namely, warmth, zeal, courage, and conscientiousness, had no impact on consumer evaluation of the brand, identification, or citizenship image.

The significantly positive correlation between citizenship image and identification (r = .34) means that the more strongly consumers identify with a brand, the more the brand is perceived as being socially responsible, or vice versa. In terms of the three proposed hypotheses, only one of them, Hypothesis 2, is fully supported. Empathy was the only dimension that satisfied both Hypotheses 1 and 2. In other words, out of the five virtue dimensions, only the empathy congruence between the consumer self and the brand has significant effect on consumer’s evaluation on the citizenship image and identification.

Second, to capture a causal relationship in the big picture, where all hypothesized links are tested simultaneously, SEM was carried out using AMOS software. Figure 3 shows the best fitting model which locates identification as a mediating variable in the relationship between person-brand virtue congruence and citizenship (GFI = 0.99, AGFI = 0.95, RMR = 0.01, CFI = 0.97), χ²(df) = 1.88. p = .08.

Figure 3.

Structural equation of the tested model.

When the location of citizenship (ethical) image and identification was switched around, the overall fit indices became poorer, in particular in the p value, χ²(df) = 2.31. p = .03, suggesting that the model should be rejected. Standard regression weights of each of the six virtue character congruences on identification were close to zero (r value ranging from .003 to .08) except on the empathy congruence (r = .21, p< .001). The contribution of integrity congruence, which was much emphasized in Anita Roddick’s philosophy for The Body Shop, was almost zero in the model (Hypothesis 3). That said, favorable citizenship image is indirectly influenced by empathy virtue congruence via consumer-brand identification. In other words, the favorable citizenship image of a CSR-led cosmetics brand is influenced by consumers’ emotional attachment to the brand, which in turn is influenced by the level of similarity between the consumer’s own virtue character empathy (supportiveness, reassurance, and sympathy) and that of the brand.

A third major finding is related to the size of the congruence level observed, in particular on the empathy dimension. Figure 4 depicts the differences of self and brand image on the six virtue character dimensions.

Figure 4.

Image comparing The Body Shop and consumers.

The good news for The Body Shop is that consumers gave integrity the highest rating, both for themselves and for The Body Shop, showing a reasonable level of congruence. However, integrity congruence was not one of the major indicators for identification and citizenship image in the model, whereas empathy was. So the bad news for The Body Shop is that while empathy congruence is the most important indicator for consumer identification, the gap between the consumers’ self-image and the image of The Body Shop on the empathy virtue was the largest.

Discussion of Findings

This section discusses key findings largely from three perspectives: theoretical contribution, practical implication, and future work.

Theoretical Contribution

Empathy virtue congruence: The key input (Hypothesis 1)

The similarity between consumer and brand personality as a characteristic on which to build consumer loyalty and identification with the brand has received a considerable amount of attention in marketing strategy. However, the theory has rarely been tested in the context of an ethically positioned brand whose main target customers are supposed to be those who share a similar ethical character. Therefore, this study investigated how the congruence theory works in the context of an ethically positioned brand, using the case study of The Body Shop.

The main theoretical contribution of this article is threefold. First, Hypothesis 1 tested whether virtue character congruence has an impact on consumers’ favorable evaluation of an ethically positioned brand as marketing theories suggest (Kassarjian, 1971). This study found that only one of the six virtue character dimensions (empathy) had a relevant outcome. The citizenship image of The Body Shop was driven by empathy congruence via consumer identification. Second, an interesting comparison can be made between integrity and empathy virtues as values. Integrity, defined as a reputation for being honest, sincere, socially responsible, and trustworthy, is probably one of the most frequently cited corporate ethical values of the last decade; and The Body Shop is no exception. The Body Shop’s Values Report appears to emphasize the integrity virtue the most: “Walking the talk, running our business with integrity and delivering against our promises are key to maintaining the trust of all our stakeholders” (The Body Shop, 2005). If integrity is a normative concept, empathy represents a “psychological process” and an ability to perceive the feelings of other people (Sawyier, 1975), expressed as being concerned, reassuring, supportive, and sympathetic toward others.

In this research, The Body Shop is shown to be reasonably well placed on the integrity character in its consumers’ minds. Therefore, the gap on integrity between consumers and The Body Shop personality is relatively small.

However, it was the level of congruence between the consumers’ self-image and their image of The Body Shop on the “empathy” virtue (supportive, reassuring, concerned, and sympathetic), not the “integrity” virtue, that contributed most in shaping citizenship image through customer identification. Apparently, Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, occasionally emphasized the importance of creating emotional attachment through a caring and loving attitude, but in reality the empathy level of The Body Shop as perceived by the sample customers was significantly lower than the integrity level and the customers’ own empathy level.

Not surprisingly, The Body Shop’s claim to be a “caring” company “listening to stakeholders” has often been challenged by the fact that it pays its store workers low wages, and it opposes trade unions (Greenpeace, 1998).

This research was conducted prior to the takeover bid by L’Oréal, but customers of The Body Shop had already seen that in reality the company fell much below their own empathy levels. As The Body Shop had in the past been very negative about the standards and ethics of the large established cosmetics companies, its decision to accept the takeover would have come as a considerable and “anti-empathetic” blow to its long-standing customers.

The mediating role of identification (Hypotheses 2 and 3)

The success of a CSR-led brand will depend on its ability to keep the image of a good citizen. The third theoretical contribution of this article relates to the mediating role of identification in linking citizenship and virtue character congruence. A good ethical image (specifically that of being a good citizen) is influenced by consumer-brand identification (Hypothesis 2). Consumer identification with a brand is influenced by the level of empathy congruence, the similarity between consumers’ perception of their own empathy and that of the brand (Hypothesis 3). In other words, consumers of The Body Shop products are more likely to have a favorable citizenship image if they can associate themselves closely with and have affinity with the company; this association and affinity in turn is influenced by the image similarity between the self and the brand on empathy virtue (supportive, concerned, and reassuring). The more strongly consumers identify with The Body Shop, the more likely they are to believe in its ethical positioning as a good corporate citizen. The role of identification is to mediate in the relationship between the self-brand similarity on empathy and the citizenship image (see Figure 3).

The findings provide a useful explanation for the drop in The Body Shop’s ethical rating and for the negative consumer reaction since the takeover by L’Oréal. The ethical image level may have been affected by consumers’ feelings of detachment from The Body Shop since the takeover. Nestlé, an important owner of L’Oréal, is a highly criticized company. Given that The Body Shop’s consumer base was supposedly one with shared values and personality, selling the company to a brand with a brand value perceived to be incompatible must have had a negative effect on consumers’ identification level, and hence ethical image, as is indicated in the structural equation model.

Finally, this research utilizes a virtue ethical character scale to directly compare consumer and brand virtue character congruence for a CSR-led brand. An empirical assessment of organizational virtue is relatively new. The notion of applying virtue ethics at the organizational (or corporate) level has become increasingly popular in the last couple of years, but empirical assessment of virtue ethics was limited to assessing human virtues with human resource (HR) implications (Wright & Goodstein, 2007). This research demonstrates how the scale can be used in assessing the congruence of ethical characters between individual (in this case customer) and organizational virtue characters simultaneously.

Practical Implications for Managers

This section discusses practical implications for managers of these research findings.

Promoting empathy for a CSR-Led brand

The cosmetics and beauty industry totals more than US$20 billion in sales in the United States alone; and an increasing number of new markets is expected to grow in developing countries such as China and in Eastern Europe. There are increasing numbers of cosmetics brands whose founding ideology has an ethical stance, which may mean that their ethical slogans are less distinctive in the consumer’s mind. The idea that the more similar a consumer’s self-image is to that of the brand, the more favorable will be their evaluation of and attitude to that brand, is a constant in the marketing literature. A positive impact of consumer self-brand image congruence on brand evaluation was expected, based on the marketing literature and on managers’ commonly held beliefs. However, this was not the case for The Body Shop.

Of the six ethical character dimensions tested, only the congruence on empathy virtue proved to have a significant impact on consumer identification (Hypothesis 3) and citizenship image (Hypothesis 1). The result therefore provides limited support to what Anita Roddick and many other marketers believe about CSR-led cosmetics brands—Sharing common values with consumers gives a campaigning and commercial strength, and continues to differentiate the brand from competitors. In particular, The Body Shop’s strategy to focus on integrity value did not work favorably on customers’ identification (Figure 3). Whether consumers and The Body Shop shared integrity (honesty, social responsibility, and trustworthiness) had little impact on promoting consumers’ emotional bonding with The Body Shop. This absence of impact may be because integrity is the most basic virtue any business is expected to possess.

CSR-led cosmetics brands require a different strategy from ordinary brands to earn a favorable consumer evaluation. They first need to identify what ethical character traits their consumers are looking for. In the case of The Body Shop, communicating its “empathy” character to customers was the key to leveraging their emotional attachment to the brand and therefore to its ethical image.

Engaging with critics

The cosmetics industry is dominated by hair and skincare products that are heavily advertised in print and on television. Because the industry’s purpose is to create a younger and better look, its ethical stance is prone to attack by critics who see its greening and social responsibility campaigns as mere window dressing or marketing tactics. Enhancing citizenship image can be achieved by working on the emotional attachment of consumers (Hypothesis 2). Emotional appeal on the empathy dimension can be achieved not only by innovative advertising strategies, but also by engaging with critics, including non-governmental organizations (NGOs), journalists, and members of the public. Companies need to create an emotional connection between their brand names and ethical values on empathy and their customers through product and service as well as store ambience. The Internet is a powerful and effective medium which can both promote and damage reputation. It offers opportunities for interactive dialogue rather than an aggressive fight back against critics, for which The Body Shop has been known. Recruiting and training staff who will interact with customers in an empathetic manner on a day-to-day basis is likely to enhance the bond between the brand and the consumer.

CSR-Led brand during the merger

Since the boom in ethical consumption in the late 1990s, mergers and acquisitions of ethical brands have increased in number, but not all of them have been successful. When Unilever acquired Ben & Jerry’s in 2000 for US$326 million, employees and loyal fans feared the unique ice cream maker would never be the same. However, the merger has been described as a success for employees and shareholders alike as the identity of Ben & Jerry’s reportedly has been preserved. Green & Black, the U.K.-based organic chocolate maker, was considering a management buyout from parent company, Kraft Foods, as their management was struggling to keep the entrepreneurial spirit at the business, which was formed in 1991 and bought by Cadbury in 2005 (“UK: Green & Black’s Management ‘Ponders Split From Kraft,’” 2011).

By 2010, Coca-Cola, which has faced criticism for selling unhealthy drinks, had taken a 58% stake in Innocent Smoothie, a pioneer in developing fully recyclable bottles, donating a share of its profits to charity and promoting healthy drinks. The smoothie maker itself had previously been criticized for agreeing to trial its drinks in McDonald’s restaurants in 2007 (“Coca-Cola Takes Majority Stake in Innocent Smoothies,” 2010). In 2013, Coca-Cola increased its stake in Innocent to nearly 100%, and it was referred as being “not so innocent” and “swallowing most of Innocent” (“Coca-Cola Swallows Most of Innocent,” 2013).

The findings of this research put a merged company like The Body Shop, taken over by a company with a poor ethical image, in a difficult position, as its consumers would have had an emotional attachment to the company before the merger. It is not the first time that a global cosmetics company has taken over a retail cosmetics brand with an ethical disposition. Estée Lauder’s acquisitions of Aveda, Origins, and Jo Malone are recognized as a successful takeover, due to the fact that the original ethical values and status were maintained under the Estée Lauder umbrella.

The Body Shop came under fire following news of the takeover. The Body Shop has always considered natural ingredients to be important whereas L’Oréal is criticized by environmental campaigners for including harmful pollutants and worrying chemicals in its cosmetics, and for testing its products on animals. L’Oréal’s link to Nestlé makes The Body Shop’s customers feel even more concerned. Nestlé is widely boycotted because it markets breast milk substitutes. Not surprisingly, consumers loyal to The Body Shop are concerned that Baby Milk Action, which coordinates the international boycott of Nestlé over the company’s aggressive marketing of baby foods, will add The Body Shop to the list of brands from which the company profits.

Building strong brand identification

The Body Shop case supports the proposition that failing to meet the empathy dimension can diminish consumers’ identification level with a brand. Worse, consumers can decide to dis-identify themselves by stopping buying or, going even further, by boycotting the brand. This theory is easily observable in reality through web-blogs, for example,

Well, I shall no longer be stepping foot in the Body Shop ever again, they have just sold themselves to L’Oréal—which not only does tests on animals for their products but is also part owned by Nestlé, and for those who are wondering why I am saying about Nestlé, read this . . .

In short, we feel that the Body Shop has ‘sold out’ and is not standing by its principles. (www.boycottbodyshop.co.uk; http://www.veggieromance.com/f/49323)

The enhancement of identification through promotion of the empathy virtue with existing customers will also help in a crisis situation, as the stronger the identification The Body Shop’s customers have with The Body Shop, the more likely they will be to forgive the company when they hear negative information or unfavorable media coverage (Ashforth & Mael, 1989). The Body Shop’s existing customers, who have many concerns about the takeover but still have emotional attachment to the brand, would like to see more interactive and empathetic communication from the company. They need to be reassured about the future identity of the brand, to see a commitment to maintaining its reputation as an ethical brand. Whatever The Body Shop does to cover the blemishes on its own visage, it will need to demonstrate that it understands its customers and their emotional reaction to the takeover.

Conclusion and Future Research

Were Anita Roddick and other marketers right to assume that customers with a certain ethical character are more likely to associate themselves with a brand with a similar character, and that emotional attachment will create a favorable citizenship image of the brand? This study’s central finding, based on a questionnaire survey of 317 consumers of The Body Shop products, is that the congruence between consumers’ self-image and the brand’s imagery on the virtue character dimensions does not have as great an influence on favorable consumer evaluation as existing marketing literature would lead one to expect. One exception is the “empathy” ethical character dimension, which influences citizenship image via consumer-brand identification. This research proposed strategies for developing and sustaining an ethical reputation for The Body Shop and other CSR-led cosmetics brands.

Virtue characters are essentially personality traits that are specifically validated against both individuals and organizations. An area of future work could be investigating virtue congruence between chief executive officers (CEOs) and organizational virtues. CSR-led brands often have charismatic leaders or founders, and their values are frequently instilled in the organization’s culture. It would also be interesting to examine organizational character as perceived by other stakeholders (such as employees or suppliers) to see if there are any differences. This article reports a single case study of one of the most recognized and most pioneered CSR-led brands, The Body Shop. There are many companies which claim to be socially responsible, giving emphasis on empathy. Other consumer brands positioned as ethical brands could revisit their CSR strategies based on the relative influence of integrity or empathy congruence on consumer evaluation. For example, Head of Communications for Innocent Drinks, Charlotte Rawlins, is quoted as saying, “we talk about ‘sharing the love’” (“The Marketing Secrets Behind Innocent Drinks,” 2008). Future studies could apply the same technique in testing the virtue character congruence not only between the consumer and the brand; but also the acquirer and the acquired company to predict success or failure of the CSR-led brand mergers.

Footnotes

The article was accepted during the editorship of Duane Windsor.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Rosa Chun (PhD, Manchester Business School) is Chair in Global Leadership, Reputation, and Responsibility at University College Dublin (UCD) Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School. Her research focuses on virtue ethics and developing corporate reputation as a strategic framework for senior management, and appears in the Harvard Business Review, Journal of Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Business Ethics, and Strategic Management Journal. These articles were featured in the Financial Times, New York Times, The Economist, Marketing Week, Times of India, and Chosun Daily.

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