Hybrid Strategy—Interference or Integration? How Corporate Communication Impacts Consumers’ Memory and Company Evaluation

ABSTRACT

This study investigates whether hybrid strategy would be more effective than corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy in boosting CSR information recall and company evaluation. Informed by the corporate ability (CA)-CSR-hybrid communication strategy typology, the associative network theory, and memory interference and integration literature, this study conducted a 2 (prior corporate associations) × 2 (subsequent corporate communication strategies) between-subjects experiment. Findings showed that hybrid (vs. CSR) strategy was more effective in generating CSR information recall when a company had previously established CA associations but did not outperform CSR strategy when the company had no previous CA associations.