Show Your Ability Or Take Responsibility?

The deterioration of the ecological environment and the enhancement of consumers' environmental awareness have promoted the rapid development of the green consumer market.The business and academic circles have carried out extensive and in-depth discussions on how to build a green brand.Among them,highlighting the enterprise's sustainable development ability and undertaking social responsibility are two common strategies to establish a green brand.However,there is little academic literature to compare corporate ability and corporate social responsibility to explore the impact of these two strategies on consumers' green brand attitude.Little is known about how the business community should combine different situations to choose these two strategies.Therefore,this paper discusses two issues from the perspective of consumers.The first problem is to explore the influence of corporate association(corporate ability association and corporate social responsibility association)on the attitude of green brands.The second problem is to compare the effects of corporate ability association and corporate social responsibility association on consumers' green brand attitudes towards consumers with promotion or prevention focus,as well as search or experience products.In order to solve these two problems,based on the clue utilization theory,this paper constructs the explanation path of "corporate ability association / corporate social responsibility association——consumers' green brand attitude".Based on regulatory focus theory,promotion focus and prevention focus are added to the explanation path as the moderator,and the moderating path is constructed.Based on the construal level theory,search products and experience products are added to the moderating path,and the moderator of the moderating path is discussed.The hypothesis of this paper is put forward through theoretical deduction.And then,Three empirical studies were carried out to test the hypothesis:questionnaire?2 × 2 experiment and 2 × 2× 2 experiment.The results show that,firstly,corporate association(corporate ability association and corporate social responsibility association)has a significant positive impact on consumers' green brand attitude.Secondly,For consumers with promotion focus,corporate ability association plays a more important role in green brand attitude than corporate social responsibility association,while for consumers with prevention focus,corporate social responsibility association plays a more important role in green brand attitude than corporate ability association.Thirdly,when the product type is search type,the research conclusion follows the second conclusion.However,when the product type is experience type,no matter for consumers with promotion focus or prevention focus,corporate social responsibility association always plays a more important role in green brand attitude than corporate ability association.Based on the above conclusion,this paper enriches the green brand literature.It also expands and deepens the applicable boundary of clue utilization theory,regulatory focus theory and construal level theory.It is helpful to form new theoretical innovation.Finally,this paper puts forward some management suggestions for enterprises on green branding.