Looking to increase consumers’ sustainable behaviors? Create prosocial ambassadors

Researchers from University of Kentucky, Arizona State University, and Pennsylvania University published a new Journal of Marketing article that explores scenarios where people take on an ambassador role to support a cause and how that affects the ambassador’s subsequent prosocial behavior.

The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled “The Prosocial Ambassador Effect: Adopting an Ambassador Role Increases Sustainable Behavior” and is authored by Corinne M.K. Hassler, Martin Mende, Maura L. Scott, and Lisa E. Bolton.

This year, the apparel company Tentree introduced an ambassador program to seek out customers “committed to a greener future” to “join the collective” and inspire other consumers to protect the world. Similarly, the sustainability-focused nonprofit 5 Gyres Institute has a program where global ambassadors pledge to “live plastic-free by embodying and promoting a reusable culture” and speaking up about “the long-lasting harms of plastic.”

Increasingly, companies are attempting ways to contribute toward a sustainable future, such as reducing the use of single-use plastic shopping bags. This new study explores scenarios where people take on an ambassador role to support a cause—that is, they (a) personally commit to a prosocial behavior (e.g., decide to use a reusable shopping bag) and (b) interpersonally promote that behavior (i.e., encourage another person to also use reusable shopping bags).

The research focuses on two key questions:

1. What is required of a consumer to become a prosocial ambassador?
2. How does taking on a prosocial ambassador role impact that ambassador’s subsequent prosocial behavior?

The Effect of a Promotional Role on a Promoter

“We build on research on referrals and word of mouth (WOM) to examine individuals who are independent from a firm, unlike brand ambassadors, but who engage in interpersonal promotion of a firm’s product,” Hassler explains. “We also look at influencers, who are paid opinion leaders with a significant social following.” Mende adds that “most research on referrals, influencers, and WOM examines promoters’ influence on their audiences or on promoters’ impact on firm-related outcomes. Little research has examined how taking on a promotional role impacts the promoter’s own behavior.”

The research team conducted four experiments to examine the ambassador role and find that consumers are more likely to engage in prosocial behaviors after taking on a prosocial ambassador role. In particular, they observe that grocery customers who adopted the ambassador role are more likely to use a reusable shopping bag than those who only personally committed to the prosocial behavior. Overall, the ambassador effect represents a new intervention to further enrich corporate social responsibility and firm efforts to contribute to the triple bottom line paradigm (i.e., people, planet, and profit).

The three main insights from this study are:

• Combining personal commitment and interpersonal promotion increases prosocial behavior beyond personal commitment alone.

• The ambassador effect elicits a systematic increase in consumers’ collective identity (i.e., a sense of being a contributing member of a group, shifting them from “I” to a part of “we” that then drives prosocial behavior).

• Inducing prosocial ambassadorship does not require firms to provide financial incentives nor does it require that the party to which the behavior is being interpersonally promoted receive financial or tangible incentives. This is an important distinction between prosocial ambassadorship and referral programs; the former can be executed via simply communicating with another person (e.g., texting).

Lessons for Chief Marketing Officers

The study offers valuable lessons for marketers and other stakeholders:

Context

Organizations need to understand the contexts in which interventions work. “Our research offers organizations a framework for designing ambassadorship interventions across a variety of prosocial contexts. Small and large organizations and for-profit as well as not-for-profit and consumer advocacy organizations can draw on our work to encourage prosociality,” says Scott.

Costs

The investment required of organizations to induce the ambassador role seems rather reasonable in time and monetary expense, and simplistic in operation/procedure. An organization only needs to encourage the ambassador to involve one other person in the prosocial behavior. Importantly, firms do not need to provide a financial incentive to induce the ambassador role. In fact, it is conceivable that ambassadorship programs could create additional revenues if the focal products (e.g., reusable bags, reusable beverage containers) are offered for sale related to “buy-one, give-one for 50% off” or even as full-priced “ambassador bundles.”

Longevity

It is important for organizations to understand the longevity of the effects a focal intervention can elicit. This work suggests that the ambassador effect is not merely situational or transient, but has the potential to impact consumers over extended periods. Organizations might use an ambassadorship program to re-engage consumers after certain time periods to remind them of their ambassador role and potentially even deepen/broaden the consumer-organization relationship. Relatedly, organizations might be able to leverage the “collective identity” of their ambassadors to facilitate consumer-organization bonding, further promoting consumer loyalty and brand reputation.  

Overall, the research uncovers a novel approach to leverage marketing for good. The findings suggest that consumers can increase their own prosocial behavior by serving as prosocial ambassadors. Bolton says that “Marketing organizations can support this practice via various low-cost approaches, such as text messaging, and modest product giveaways, making it a win-win-win for marketers, consumers, and creating a sustainable society.

Full article and author contact information available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/00222429241265000

About the Journal of Marketing 

The Journal of Marketing develops and disseminates knowledge about real-world marketing questions useful to scholars, educators, managers, policy makers, consumers, and other societal stakeholders around the world. Published by the American Marketing Association since its founding in 1936, JM has played a significant role in shaping the content and boundaries of the marketing discipline. Shrihari (Hari) Sridhar (Joe Foster ’56 Chair in Business Leadership, Professor of Marketing at Mays Business School, Texas A&M University) serves as the current Editor in Chief.
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