Abstract: Understanding how to effectively communicate Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is essential for practitioners and researchers. In this study, we explore consumer message attributions and responses to CSR communication through an experimental research in which we manipulate discourse types (expositive vs. narrative) and services contexts (utilitarian vs. hedonic) while comparing consumers with different social value orientation (pro-social vs. individualistic). We use data collected from 267 Spanish consumers to empirically test our hypotheses. For issue importance, CSR fit and CSR image, the expositive discourse outperforms the narrative discourse in the utilitarian service, whereas narration outperforms exposition in the context of the hedonic service, independently of whether the consumer has a pro-social or individualistic orientation. Similar findings are observed for brand attitude, trust and advocacy intentions, but only among pro-social consumers.

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