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The authors express their gratitude to the Istanbul Chamber of Industry for endorsing the study and providing membership data. The authors also thank Insan Tunali and the anonymous JMR reviewer team for constructive suggestions on earlier versions of this article. Jan-Benedict E.M. Steenkamp served as associate editor for this article. PEREN ÖZTURAN, AYŞEGÜL ÖZSOMER, and RIK PIETERS* The authors investigate the role of market orientation in advertising spending during economic contraction. They use the 2001 economic collapse in Turkey as the empirical context in which to test hypotheses regarding why some firms increase their advertising spending in a contraction period while the majority of firms cut back. Analyzing market orientation at the level of its intelligence and responsiveness facets, they find the responsiveness facet to be positively associated with increases in advertising spending but observe the intelligence facet to be negatively associated with advertising spending. Importantly, positive shifts in advertising spending during the economic contraction predict better subsequent business performance. The opposing roles of the intelligence and responsiveness facets disappear in a subsequent economic expansion period. These findings have managerial and theoretical implications. Firms that nurture the responsiveness facet of market orientation during economic contractions go against the tide to increase their advertising spending and experience the performance benefits that such countercyclical actions can amass.

Purpose In a world where corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a meaningful trend valued by firm stakeholders, it is still not clear how the marketing department integrates corporate-level social responsibility strategy into its departmental activities i.e. socially responsible marketing activities (SRMA) and whether such activities can benefit the department. Using legitimacy as the underlying theoretical explanation, this paper aims to study two instrumental returns from SRMA at the marketing department level, i.e. marketing department’s performance – impact outside the firm on multiple marketing-related outcomes and influence within the firm – the power of the marketing department compared to other departments. Design/methodology/approach Three studies were performed. Study 1 is a survey that offers a validated measure of SRMA and examines its relationship with the focal outcome variables. Study 2 is also a survey that investigates the mediating role of the marketing department’s legitimacy and the moderating role of customers’ interest in social responsibility and uses actual sales data of firms. Study 3 is an experiment that examines the main findings in a controlled setting using participants other than marketing executives i.e. chief executive officers. Findings Study 1 shows that SRMA is different than the closely related variable socially responsible business strategy and is positively related to the marketing department’s performance and influence within the firm. Study 2 complements these findings by demonstrating these impacts are mediated by the marketing department’s legitimacy and strengthened with higher customers’ interest in social responsibility. Study 3 sets the causality between the focal variables and the mediating role of legitimacy. Research limitations/implications This work extends the study of firm-level CSR to the department- and implementation-level, in the context of marketing departments. It reveals the underlying mechanism driving the positive impact of SRMA, i.e. legitimacy, and identifies a moderating condition, i.e. customers’ interest in social responsibility. It further extends research on the role of the marketing department and its contribution to firm performance. Practical implications Marketers can benefit from the reported findings by understanding when and how CSR-related, domain-specific activities that feature the traditional responsibilities of marketing, including market research, customer relationship management and the product, promotions, price and place (4Ps) may be reshaped to include a broader set of stakeholders and a socially responsible angle and thereby generate more legitimacy and impact – inside and outside the firm. Originality/value This study provides a novel perspective on how marketing departments evaluate CSR in their daily activities where such engagement vests increasing returns to the marketing department and underpins the successful implementation of CSR.

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Chief marketing officers (CMOs) engage with their stakeholders on social media platforms with the intention to create a digital impact. CMO communication on societal issues is understudied despite heightened global attention to brands’ social practices. This poses three research questions: (1) How central is corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sociopolitical activism in the communication of global brands’ CMOs? (2) Does CMOs’ communication about CSR or sociopolitical activism have a digital impact? and (3) How do brand origin (i.e., geographic location of headquarters [HQ]) and CMO nationality (U.S. vs. non-U.S.) moderate the CSR/sociopolitical activism−digital communication impact? Drawing on expectancy violation theory, this research (Ntweets = 17,468 over NCMOs=81) finds that CMOs rarely publish CSR or sociopolitical activism communication on Twitter (5.3% and 3.2%) and demonstrates a higher digital impact of retweets for CSR and a lower impact for sociopolitical activism tweets than regular communication. Furthermore, non-U.S. HQ and CMO nationality strengthen the positive effect of CSR communication and weaken the negative effect of sociopolitical activism communication.