Purpose This study aims to investigate the impact of strategic and institutional (normative) corporate social responsibility (CSR) on brand value and brand reputation, based on the strategic and legitimacy theory of CSR. It argues that because CSR strengths represent firms’ proactive approach to satisfy their stakeholders’ interests, the authors expect that this proactive approach is likely to generate an accumulated level of reservoir of goodwill that is positively related to the level of brand value. In contrast, the authors would expect that social irresponsibility (CSR concerns), as a measure of firms’ reactive position to stakeholders’ interests, adversely affects the incremental change in this reservoir of goodwill. Design/methodology/approach This paper measures strategic CSR using CSR strengths and normative (institutional) CSR from CSR concerns scores from the MSCI ESG (Kinder Lydenburg Domini). This paper measures the level of brand value from the Interbrand listing, and it measures the brand reputation based on changes in brand value and brand ranking from Interbrand’s 100 global brands. Findings This paper finds evidence to support the authors’ theory that one-, two- and three-year lagged CSR strengths positively affect the level of brand value. This study also finds empirical evidence to support the authors’ hypothesis that CSR concerns adversely affect changes in brand value and brand ranking. This study concludes that the differing impacts of CSR strengths and CSR concerns help the authors better understand the impacts of firms’ pro-action and reaction to stakeholders’ interests ion brand values and ranking. Practical implications The findings indicate that strategic CSR enhances brand value, while socially irresponsible activities that are against social norms, values and ethics adversely affect the companies’ legitimacy and adversely affect changes in brand reputation. Originality/value This research offers a new perspective to distinguish the differing impacts of CSR strengths and concerns on brand value and brand reputation.

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Business scholars agree that well-constructed experiential learning and specifically client-based projects (CBPs) provide an opportunity for students to apply concepts they learn to solve particular problems. As an additional outcome, they provide value for multiple stakeholders including the client, business community, university, and the instructor. However, CBPs can be inherently complex and demanding on instructors, impeding adoption and sustained use. As critical participatory action researchers, we worked collaboratively with faculty within our marketing department to examine and address the challenges of scaling capacity to support, effectively replicate, and grow use of CBPs in our business school marketing courses and subsequently other department curriculum. This article describes a unified view of project management and business development processes as a framework for effective scaled use of CBPs and outlines a suprastructure. It additionally offers “how to” guidance that can support use of a suprastructure as a means of achieving economies of scale, including description of roles and relationships.

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Many durable goods firms use price promotion strategies and advertising simultaneously to impact consumer preferences among vertically differentiated product offerings. In this research, we use a large secondary dataset of automotive purchases ( N = 323,959) to investigate how advertising spending differentially moderates the positive impact of both customer- and retailer-directed price incentives on consumers’ premium level of purchase for vertically differentiated products. We find that higher advertising spending magnifies the positive impact of customer-directed price incentives on consumers’ preference for more premium purchases. In contrast, higher advertising spending attenuates the positive impact of retailer-directed price incentives on consumers’ preference for more premium purchases. Our work is distinct from previous research, which has almost exclusively focused on the CPG industry and the effects of advertising and price promotions on general demand metrics—instead of consumers’ preferences for premium products. Our work has important implications for practitioners and consumer welfare.