Consumers all over the world are increasingly aware of how their purchase decisions influence the world around us and wish to reward companies who act responsibly towards the society and the environment. However, the spread of greenwashing and cause exploitation for profit has led to increasing levels of consumer scepticism regarding CSR and the communication of it. This undergraduate thesis explores the scepticism amongst consumers and tries to explain which factors influence it and to what degree. The theoretical part first explains the concepts of CSR and CSR communication and gives some practical advice on how to communicate more successfully. Then it explores the concept of scepticism and describes the main factors which influence it. The empirical part focuses on an underexplored communication factor related to the message, the message tone, and compares it to a more established factor, motive attribution. The empiric research was carried out on 297 participants in the country of Slovenia, most of whom happened to be women. It showed that both message tone and motive attribution significantly influence consumer scepticism, and confirmed that tone does indeed influence attribution as originally assumed. An interesting discovery was the positive influence of altruistic motive attribution on scepticism. It is also worth noting that the general level of consumer scepticism towards the CSR messages was rather low.
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