A great start? Sustainability mission statements affect consumer behavior

Sustainable consumption calls for organizations to act responsibly for the future generation. In response, companies are embracing sustainability into their strategy. A great strategy starts with a mission statement as a way to differentiate a company from its rivals. The significance of sustainability mission statements not only informs customers about the commitment of a firm to embracing sustainable development goals, but also creates values for customers who are likely to self-identify with the company of being good and return the company favorably with supportive purchasing actions. The rationale leads to the research objective to investigate the relationships between a sustainability mission statement and the intention of the identification of the consumer to purchase. A quantitative causal and survey methodology was designed and a sample of 245 Taiwanese respondents was collected. The results in the research model one showed that only environmental and economic sustainability have an effect on consumer purchase intention. When model two explored the mediation effect of consumer-company identification, the relationship between sustainability mission statement and consumer purchase intention was significantly strengthened, indicating that consumer-company identification is a complementary mediator, despite the mediation role, environmental sustainability directly and positively affected consumer purchase intention. With mediation, social sustainability became critical to influence consumer behavior, and the relative strength is first environmental sustainability, followed by social and economic sustainability. This research contributes to the gap in the marketing literature by first incorporating corporate sustainability into mission statements and further explores the effect of sustainability mission statements on consumer behavior. Furthermore, the study was the first to examine the mediation role of consumer-company identification based on social identity theory in the field of corporate sustainability. Managerial implications are provided for companies to prioritize and articulate their sustainability statement as their marketing communication strategy to have a head start.