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Although brand theorists suggest that what a person knows about a company (i.e., corporate associations) can influence perceptions of the company's products, little systematic research on these effects exists. The authors examine the effects of two general types of corporate associations on product responses: One focuses on the company's capabilities for producing products, that is, corporate ability (CA) associations, and the other focuses on the company's perceived social responsibility, that is, corporate social responsibility (CSR) associations. The results of three studies, including one that measures respondents' CA and CSR associations for well-known companies and one that uses consumers recruited in a shopping mall, demonstrate that (1) what consumers know about a company can influence their beliefs about and attitudes toward new products manufactured by that company, (2) CA and CSR associations may have different effects on consumer responses to products, and (3) products of companies with negative associations are not always destined to receive negative responses. The authors conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for marketing managers and further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous authors have discussed the possibility of a marketing science and have presented their visions to describe the characteristics of such a science. Fundamentally, these visions must come to grips with the idea of "truth" and the role truth plays in theory and research. In this article, the authors explore "truth in marketing science" by describing the essential problem of science in general and discussing the issues that shape the notion of a marketing science in particular. They note two limiting factors in viewing marketing as a science: (1) marketing as an applied field and (2) marketing's attempts to explain human behavior - a phenomenon that is mutable, unpredictable, and reactive. They propose a scientific realist perspective, which can be useful for describing some of the "scientific" explanations offered in the marketing literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]