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The purpose of this article is to develop a model that closely examines the consequences of social and environmental corporate action. This is suggested by an increasing need for accomplishing an integrative view on business activities and social aims – the so-called corporate social responsibility – especially in the current environmentally turbulent time and a rising socially conscious consumer population. But doing business is often associated with brand- or corporate misconduct as well. Hence, corporate social responsibility forms the positive component of corporate social performance (CSP), consequently a favorable brand- or company behavior. Corresponding, corporate social irresponsibility or misconduct forms the negative part of such performance. Considering this definition a model is conceptualized to analyze the integrative effect of CSP on consumer perception of brands in terms of brand personality. This study examines how CSP as a whole, and social responsible behavior and brand misconduct individually, affect the brand personality. Furthermore, the investigation scrutinizes the causal connections between brand personality and behavior-oriented brand equity to consider the economic relevance of our case.

This paper addresses the operational part of sustainable marketing, especially advertising with sustainability. This form of advertising has to consider particularly the aspect of credibility since the social-ecological value of a product is often not evident for the consumer. Therefore, credibility represents an essential competitive advantage for companies who offer sustainable products. The purpose of this paper is to identify the determinants which are decisive for the credibility attribution of sustainable advertisement in order to achieve an improved comprehension of the latent construct and a more credible design of this type of advertisement. In addition, the actual influence of credibility on consumer behavior is to be analyzed. In order to obtain adequate results, the conceptualization and empirical validation of a causal model were performed which measures both the evaluation and effect of credibility. Thereby, the trustworthiness of the brand communicator, mediated by the content of the message, appears as an essential factor of influence regarding the credibility attribution. Further, the analysis concludes that the credibility of the advertisement directly influences the attitude of the consumer toward the product.