1. Introduction
Social media is now essential for companies to promote brands and communicate with consumers due to its interactivity and participatory characteristics [
1,
2]. Industries and academia have shown its effectiveness on business performance; for example, 80% of Fortune 500 companies use Facebook for marketing purposes [
3], 87% of small businesses experienced an increase in their profits from these platforms [
4], and 85% of corporate decision makers claimed that use of social media was critical when making business purchases [
5].
At the same time, an increasing number of consumers has become more responsive to firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) involvement [
6]. Cone Communications’ survey [
7] has shown that the percentage of Americans who find it acceptable for companies to be involved in societal issues in their marketing has increased from 66% in 1993 to 88%, and 90% of consumers want information from firms regarding how they support social causes. Responding to these growing interests, companies are now involved in creating more CSR-related messages on social media [
8] beyond promotional messaging. Promoting causes and societal issues has indeed proven effective on social media platforms. For example, Procter & Gamble (P & G) launched the Love over Bias campaign to counteract bias and discrimination affecting numerous people. After a story about LGBT rights was showcased in a television show during the campaign, a wave of testimonials appeared on Twitter, through which people shared their own experiences with similar racial, gender, or class bias, using the hashtag #LoveOverBias. This resulted in 300 million video views, more than five billion of earned-media impressions [
9].
Although social media benefits companies because it provides opportunities to promote CSR-related causes, resulting in positive outcomes such as awareness of the issues, consumer participation, enhanced corporate image, and even financial performance [
10,
11], few studies have further explored ways to utilize social media platforms to better communicate with consumers regarding CSR issues. Although the current CSR literature discusses an overall effectiveness of CSR messages on social media [
12,
13], the types of messaging in terms of content characteristics, formats, topics, and tones must be further explored.
In this research, we would like to focus on calls to action (i.e., firm-initiated participation embedded in social media messages to encourage user participation and engagement; [
14]) in order to explore ways to promote CSR messages. Calls to action are the most popular and actionable practice in social media adopted by practitioners and described in the literature due to the interactive nature of the platform [
15]. Additionally, studies have shown that encouraging participation is particularly critical in social media because it enhances consumer experience through participation [
16], making them “active co-producers” who participate in firm-initiated activities, express their views, and interact with other users [
17].
Based on these motivations, this research investigates how to design CSR messages using calls to action to enhance engagement in social media. This study aims to answer the following questions: (1) What types of calls to action on social media drive consumer engagement? More specifically, how do such diverse types of calls to action lead to consumers’ attitudinal and behavioral engagement outcomes? (2) Does using more calls to action within CSR messages generate greater engagement?
For analysis, data were collected from official accounts created by popular consumer product brands on Facebook and Twitter to test the theoretical framework. Since there is little evidence of different types of calls to action in the literature, this study is exploratory in nature and categorizes types of calls to action based on the data and examples of branded messages and investigates how they become more or less effective for CSR messages. In so doing, this research is among the first in the literature to examine the types of calls to action to enhance the effectiveness of CSR messages on social media, and it contributes to the field by advancing the knowledge of how to be more effective, beyond whether these calls are effective.
We argue that considering calls to action as a means to promote CSR messages will provide actionable and clear guidelines to companies because this practice seeks more specific outcomes by requesting directly the types of contributions they expect from consumers and receives immediate and visible outcomes by assessing the level of attitudinal and behavioral engagement in those messages. In addition, calls to action in CSR messages in social media lead to sustainable development goals (SDGs) through consumers’ active and direct participation in diverse activities because they encourage the actual behavior, not limited to awareness. Moreover, companies can benefit from enhanced attitudinal and behavioral engagement in social media messages, followed by enhanced firm performance and marketing capabilities. Therefore, our research discusses a “win–win” scenario for companies’ business performance and long-term development in society.
The remaining parts of the paper are as follows. First, it describes what is known about CSR communications on social media and the effects of user participation in social media in literature before developing the conceptual framework and hypotheses. Second, it discusses the data and empirical considerations along with how these concerns are addressed, followed by empirical findings and discussions. Finally, it presents managerial implications based on the findings and suggests future research directions founded on the study limitations.
3. Methodology
3.1. Data
Analysis was performed on a collection of 2416 posts on their official social media accounts created from January 2015 to August 2015 by eight consumer product brands that are popular in the United States (i.e., Adidas, Allstate, Budweiser, Coca-Cola, Corona, McDonald’s, Nike, and Red Bull), covering the sports, beverage, insurance, and fast-food industries. Branded posts uploaded by each firm on their official accounts on Facebook and Twitter were included in the analysis because these two platforms are the most actively used by firms for social media marketing and have the largest number of users. The dataset was completed by integrating information from several sources. First, we collected a list of branded posts with basic information such as engagement metrics or the time the posts were uploaded with the help of a social media agency. Second, our main study variables and other content characteristics for each post in the list were collected using an online consumer panel. Lastly, we extracted additional information such as text length, hashtag, or URLs using a search option within the text in the Excel datasheet.
3.1.1. Dependent Variables
The literature defines consumer engagement as “the level of the customer’s (or potential customer’s) interactions and connections with the brand or firm’s offerings or activities, often involving others in the social network created around the brand/offering/activity” [
62]. Similarly, Saura et al. [
63] have defined engagement as “interaction between the company and its on-line community” in the digital environment. Furthermore, Reyes-Menendez et al. [
64] have highlighted the importance of engagement and argue that it is one of the key metrics to measure the efficiency of marketing strategies in the digital era. Scholars have also argued that engagement brings forth positive attitudes and viral outcomes such as shares, referrals, or comments [
65], indicating that attitudinal and behavioral perspectives are considered in engagement [
66,
67]. In the context of social media, engagement metrics have been studied in terms of likes (i.e., favorites on Twitter) or shares (i.e., retweets on Twitter) [
3,
18,
19,
20,
21]. In this study, the main dependent variables were the number of likes as an attitudinal engagement measure and the number of shares as a behavioral engagement measure, while the number of comments was also considered in additional analysis. We obtained the number of likes, shares, and comments on each post from a social media agency along with the list of brands and the links of their social media posts.
3.1.2. Independent Variables
We used the grounded theory approach [
50] as a basis and classified our main study variables via two stages. First, in the open coding stage, we worked with two research assistants who were not familiar with the study context to review the dataset. During the process, we identified five common types of contributions that companies solicit from users and checked if they were collectively exhaustive.
Next, in the structural coding stage, we coded the posts in our dataset into the five categories from Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk) workers. Mturk is an online space where researchers can ask workers to complete designed tasks and provide monetary compensation. We recruited workers who live in the United States and are over the age of 18. In addition, we filtered out workers by their acceptance rate and recruited those who had a 95% or above acceptance rate for quality of responses. We provided them with detailed instructions and examples to show how to code the posts according to the five categories. Each worker coded messages based on a created coding instruction whereby 1 indicates if a message contains CSR-related issues and 0 if not. The five main study variables were also coded based on a coding instruction containing descriptions of (1) invitations to brand programs, (2) invitations to external events, (3) invitations to games, (4) invitations to storytelling, and (5) rewarding consumers; these five variables were coded as 1 if the post contains such information and 0 if not. Next, the total number of calls to action was collected by calculating the sum of the five variables, resulting in a range between 0 (i.e., no call to action was used) and 5 (i.e., all five calls to action were used). Each post was coded by three to five workers and the classification was determined using the majority rule. Following that, two research assistants reviewed the works and reached an agreement after discussing any unclear cases (i.e., reliability scores measured by intraclass correlation coefficients [
68] ranged between 0.67 to 0.92, which are within the acceptable range [
69]). This manual coding method is commonly used by social media [
20,
70,
71] because it is effective in extracting information from a dataset considering the message context [
70].
For validation, we found evidence in the literature and confirmed with industry examples to ensure that the types of calls to action classified in our research have also been used in practice. Examples of calls to action in our dataset are presented in
Table 1.
3.1.3. Control Variables
For the control variables, a literature review was undertaken to find other message factors that are also known to affect engagement with social media. First, content characteristics were considered by examining if a message contains monetary, informational, or emotional characteristics. Social media researchers have examined if messages are informational (i.e., uses an information-based or rational appeal to gain consumers’ interests or attention) and/or emotional (i.e., uses an emotional appeal to gain consumers’ interests or attention based on the presence or strength of emotions) because this is one of the key factors that drive engagement in social media [
3,
18,
19,
20,
58]. In addition, monetary characteristics (i.e., whether the message provides information about monetary benefits) are considered as engagement in social media is largely determined by whether the message is trying to sell something (i.e., persuasion-oriented) and by types of information provided in the message (i.e., about the product or brand) [
3,
19]. These variables are also coded based on a content analysis approach using manual coding, following the extant literature [
72]. Similar to the process used in collecting calls to action variables, an online panel recruited from Mturk read the coding instruction along with definitions of the variables, whereby 1 indicates if a message contains (1) informational appeal, (2) emotional appeal, and (3) monetary appeal, and 0 if not.
Next, considering the format of messages, information was included about pictures, videos, use of questions, hashtags, URL, and length of text within the posts and incorporated into the model based on prior literature [
3,
19,
73]. Information about hashtags, URLs, and length of text was extracted by researchers within the Excel datasheet using search and count functions. In addition, data provided by the agency containing topics within the messages, in terms of the use of people, product information, and humor, were accounted for. Finally, the platform (i.e., Facebook or Twitter) was considered in the analysis. Detailed descriptions and statistics regarding the variables in the dataset are presented in
Table 2. The correlation matrix of the variables is presented in
Table 3.
3.2. Empirical Considerations
Several empirical concerns arose from the nature of the data. First, the main dependent variables (i.e., likes and shares) are count variables with overdispersion; therefore, this study adopted a negative binomial regression model, following the previous studies on social media [
20]. In addition, Vuong test results indicated that negative binomial regression would be more appropriate than zero-inflated negative binomial (
p = 1.000 for likes;
p = 0.9321 for shares).
Second, the engagement level with previous posts is likely to affect engagement with the next post because each brand has a similar communication style across posts, and consumers’ reactions to prior posts are also considered when designing subsequent posts. To account for this concern, lagged-dependent variables are included as control variables in the model.
Moreover, it is plausible to assume that brands have their own communication styles, fan bases, and marketing capabilities. Therefore, brand fixed effects are incorporated in the model to account for different characteristics across brands.
Finally, timing is also an important factor to consider when uploading posts. Thus, the month and day of the week when the post was uploaded are also included in the model.
3.3. Results
Before discussing the main analysis results,
Table 4 provides an overview of the dataset, which presents the use of calls to action in CSR and non-CSR messages. The results show that among all CSR messages in the dataset, 32.64% use invitations to brand programs, 65.54% employ invitations to external events, 21.50% utilize games, 39.12% apply invitations to storytelling, and 13.21% use consumer rewards, indicating higher percentages than those of non-CSR messages across all five calls to action. In terms of the number of calls to action, close to 60% of CSR messages use one or two, while more than 60% of the non-CSR messages contain no or one call to action. Overall, the results indicate that CSR messages use calls to action more actively within the content than non-CSR messages.
3.3.1. Impact of Different Types of Calls to Action in CSR Messages on Likes and Shares
The main analysis results are presented in
Table 5. First, a likelihood-ratio test of all regressions in our analysis resulted in a
p-value less than 0.001, showing that the model fit is statistically significant. The results show that CSR messages have a positive effect on likes (β = 0.40, SE = 0.23,
p = 0.089) and shares (β = 47, SE = 0.27,
p = 0.078), indicating that when messages discuss CSR issues, it results in higher levels of engagement. Next, different types of calls to action show mixed results about their effects on engagement. Invitations to brand programs have a negative effect on likes (β = −0.25, SE = 0.10,
p = 0.014) and shares (β = −0.47, SE = 0.11,
p < 0.001). Rewarding consumers has a positive effect on likes (β = 0.38, SE = 0.22,
p = 0.079), and invitations to external events have a positive effect on shares (β = 0.18, SE = 0.11,
p = 0.088). Other variables do not have significant influences on engagement outcomes. The results suggest that the effects of calls to action may vary depending on the way they are used.
The interaction effects between calls to action and CSR messages on engagement are significantly positive or negative. First, the interaction effects of invitations to brand programs and CSR messages are significant and positive on likes (β = 0.46, SE = 0.27, p = 0.083) and shares (β = 1.12, SE = 0.29, p < 0.001), indicating that this call to action in CSR messages increases engagement and supporting H1. However, the interaction effects of invitations to external events and CSR messages on likes and shares are not significant (p > 0.1 for both), and therefore, H2 is not supported. Next, the interaction effects of invitations to games and CSR messages are significant and positive on both likes (β = 1.26, SE = 0.47, p = 0.008) and shares (β = 1.75, SE = 0.58, p = 0.002), showing that this specific call to action in CSR messages is effective in enhancing engagement and also providing support for H3. In addition, the interaction effects of invitations to storytelling and CSR messages are significant and negative on likes (β = −0.92, SE = 0.26, p < 0.001) and shares (β = −1.49, SE = 0.29, p < 0.001), confirming H4. Finally, the interaction effects of rewarding consumers and CSR messages are significant and negative on likes (β = −1.25, SE = 0.41, p = 0.002) and shares (β = −1.20, SE = 0.42, p = 0.004), indicating that consumer rewards in CSR messages decrease engagement. Therefore, H5 is not supported.
3.3.2. Effects of Total Number of Calls to Action in CSR Messages on Likes and Shares
Results from the analysis of the effects of the total number of calls to action within a CSR message on engagement outcomes are presented in
Table 6. First, the main effects of CSR messages are positive on likes (β = 0.64, SE = 0.28,
p = 0.021) and shares (β = 0.75, SE = 0.34,
p = 0.027), which is consistent with the previous analysis results. The main effects of the total number of calls to action on likes and shares are not significant (
p > 0.1 for both). The interaction effect of the total number of calls to action and CSR messages on likes is significant and negative (β = −0.19, SE = 0.11,
p = 0.07), indicating that the engagement level decreases when more calls to action are used together in one CSR message and confirming H6. However, the effect was not found on shares (
p > 0.1), and thus, no support is provided for H6.
3.4. Robustness Check
First, we tested the model using the number of comments as our dependent variable to examine if the effects hold across diverse engagement metrics. We found a positive and significant effect of invitation to brand programs (β = 0.60, SE = 0.36, p = 0.096) and a negative and significant effect of rewarding consumers (β = −1.35, SE = 0.51, p = 0.007) on comments, which is consistent with the main study results. In line with the results on likes and shares, the invitation to external events also does not show a significant effect on comments (p > 0.1). However, the effects of invitation to games and invitation to storytelling on comments are also not significant (p > 0.1). Overall, the effects of calls to action are less pronounced on comments, compared to likes and shares, while overall directions remain consistent.
Second, to examine if outliers affect the study results, data were winsorized at 1% and 5% levels to test if the results remain consistent. The interaction effects of the five types of calls to action and CSR messages stay consistent for likes at both the 1% and 5% levels. The interaction effects of the calls to action and CSR messages are also consistent for shares at the 1% level. However, the effects of invitations to games and rewarding consumers in CSR messages become less significant on shares at the 5% level (p > 0.1), while the directions remain consistent. The interaction effect of the number of calls to action and CSR messages on likes also stay consistent at the 1% level.
4. Discussion
This research examined how different types of calls to action, which are widely used in social media, are more or less effective on consumer engagement when used in CSR messages. Five types of calls to action were categorized according to data, and not all are equally effective in enhancing engagement. The analysis results suggest that companies’ invitations to their campaigns or programs and games within CSR messages enhance both attitudinal and behavioral engagement outcomes, which are measured by likes and shares. These findings indicate that encouraging consumer participation must be more specific and relevant to brands by linking it to the company’s own programs or campaigns (e.g., Dove’s Real Beauty campaign) to attract user attention and deliver the message that the company is making real efforts to support the issues. The results are also in line with the previous findings that internal CSR messages (i.e., more directly relevant to firms) are more effective [
31] and a clear fit between brand and message content leads to higher engagement [
59], extending the findings into the domain of CSR communications in social media. In addition, entertaining aspects of messages are also important in CSR communications because they encourage consumers to participate and contribute to the content, driven by interest and enjoyment. The findings contribute to the extant literature by confirming the idea that social media messages must be entertaining [
57,
58], advancing our understanding of social media communications into CSR messages.
In contrast, inviting consumers to storytelling and engaging in further conversations is not effective in CSR messages, decreasing the level of likes and shares. The effects of this practice are shown to be consistent with this study’s prediction and in line with the idea that more efforts required by consumers and fewer efforts made by firms hurt the message’s effectiveness [
53]. Similar findings are also shown in the related literature that consumers are more skeptical about firms’ ability and perceive that a message was only persuasive when the message was created with greater consumer contribution compared to the firm’s [
61]. However, the findings do not show a significant interaction effect of invitations to external events with CSR messages on consumers’ attitudinal and behavioral engagement. One of the possibilities explaining the insignificant effect would be that the nature of external events forms a weaker connection with CSR issues promoted by companies, thereby decreasing interest. Although this highlights the importance of a fit between brand and message content [
59], it is also consistent with the previous findings on the effectiveness of CSR messages in that they should speak to issues directly relevant to firms in order to persuade stakeholders [
31].
Perhaps the most surprising finding is that rewarding consumers in CSR messages is less effective in driving attitudinal and behavioral engagement, which is the opposite of the hypothesis. Although the underlying causes were not specifically studied in this research, several possible scenarios could help explain the negative effect. First, rewards stated in CSR messages might vary in their effectiveness depending on the type. For example, this study did not distinguish among rewards such as experiences, information, and monetary compensation and instead treated them the same in the analysis. It is possible that consumers would seek monetary compensation from CSR messages rather than other types of compensation. Alternatively, the rewards may vary by magnitude, amount, or relevance, but these considerations were also not included in the analysis.
Second, it is plausible that CSR communications differ from non-CSR communications, and consumers do not consider rewards to be an important driver of their contribution to the former. Therefore, it would be worthwhile to investigate the characteristics and types of customer rewards further to gain a better understanding of why and how they do not seem to work in CSR messages.
Third, although we predicted that the entertaining benefit in the practice of rewarding consumers is unclear and may depend on context, it is possible that CSR messages rewarding consumers in our dataset were not entertaining enough compared to the other practice, which resulted in lower levels of engagement [
57,
58].
The number of calls to action matters in CSR communications. Consistent with the hypothesis, more calls to action used in CSR messages decreased consumers’ attitudinal engagement. However, the effects become less significant on behavioral engagement, while the overall direction remains consistent. Although further analysis is suggested, this study posits that the effects are more pronounced on likes because it is easier to click a “like” button on the platforms compared to “shares,” which require further steps to be taken. We also examined the effects of calls to action in CSR messages on “comments” and found the effects less pronounced compared to “likes” or “shares,” while overall directions remain consistent. We posit that such a difference arose from the nature of engagement metrics. Scholars have found that the effects of social media messages are different on “comments,” compared to “likes” or “shares” [
57]. While scholars have mixed views on why and how the effects differ on the three metrics, Ji et al. [
58] have argued that these differences arise from the varying degrees of engagement, in which “likes” is the shallowest level, and “comments” indicates the deepest level of engagement. Therefore, it is plausible that our effects are more pronounced on “likes” and “shares” because they are easier to implement compared to “comments.” While it is also possible that the mechanisms differ on “comments,” future studies would benefit from further exploring the differences among those engagement metrics and studying various strategies to target different metrics.
4.1. Managerial Implications
This research is among the first in literature that goes beyond a study of the overall effectiveness of calls to action on consumer engagement in social media and explores diverse types of calls to action along with their effectiveness when used in CSR messages. The findings of this research provide novel insights and actionable guidelines for managers in terms of how to better communicate CSR issues to consumers and encourage their contributions using social media.
This research suggests that not all calls to action are equally effective in CSR messages, and several types are shown to decrease engagement levels. Therefore, it is suggested that social media marketing managers use calls to action strategically, considering how they could deliver sincere motives of serving society and entertain consumers at the same time.
Findings in this research suggest the following implications to managers. First, managers must consider a fit between brand and message content and are encouraged to utilize items that are more specific and relevant to their companies and develop programs accordingly. More specifically, firms are encouraged to develop their own programs or events that are more appropriate to brand characteristics to promote relevant societal issues. For example, the Save Our Species campaign designed by Lacoste provides a clear understanding of why the brand aims to protect nature and wildlife, based on the fit between the message and brand. While firms may also utilize external events or moments in their CSR messages to attract consumers’ attention, we suggest that firms make a clear connection between the events and brand characteristics to demonstrate the reasons they are promoting these events and their sincere motives to promote values benefiting society. For example, external sporting events such as the Olympics or World Cup offer firms an opportunity to promote relevant societal topics (e.g., world peace, freedom from bias, overcoming challenges). However, it is possible that many firms end up delivering the same message to consumers, which undermines persuasiveness and decreases engagement with the message because such events also serve as an opportunity for other firms. Therefore, firms must ensure that brand-specific items are incorporated into messages (e.g., creating brand songs, introducing brand ambassadors, or creating their own events related to the external events) to make sense of why they are promoting specific societal issues using those events.
Second, they should also include entertaining aspects such as games or contests in CSR messages to make consumers interested in the issues and want to voluntarily participate. Previous studies [
57,
58] and our study findings have shown that entertaining consumers is a must in driving engagement in social media. Using the interactive nature of the platform, firms have an opportunity to adopt diverse tactics to attract consumers’ attention and ensure that they have fun during participation. Therefore, we suggest firms adopt quizzes, contests, or other types of games in CSR messages because the challenging aspects of these tactics drive participation and make consumers anticipate and curious about the results, leading them to enjoy the content during the process. We expect that consumers’ enjoyment in CSR messages will lead to greater interests in the issues that firms aim to promote.
Moreover, this research suggests that calls to action must be used with caution because multiple calls to action do not lead to higher levels of engagement. Indeed, this study argues that the use of diverse calls to action within a message could decrease the clarity of the goals and increase pressure on consumers, which could reduce their overall enjoyment of the content. Therefore, managers are recommended to focus on one or two of the most important actions required of consumers and clearly deliver them in the message.
4.2. Limitations and Future Research Directions
Suggestions for future research directions are based on several limitations in this study. First, this research is an exploratory analysis studying the five types of calls to action based on the dataset and examples in practice. Future studies could contribute to the literature by further investigating types of calls to action based on theoretical grounds and proving an overarching framework of calls to action.
Secondly, although the dataset consists of several popular brands, it is limited to US companies and was collected several years ago. It is possible that more recent social media practices from other countries show different dynamics. Thus, to achieve more robust results that are generalizable across time and contexts, analysis based on more recent data from different brands across various countries is suggested as a future research direction.
Thirdly, although the empirical study findings show that different types of calls to action affect consumer engagement outcomes on social media, the mechanisms by which those variables are related to engagement are not illustrated in this research. Future studies could advance this understanding of CSR communications on social media and find ways to strengthen the positive effects of calls to action by taking an additional step to explore the mechanisms by which different types and numbers of calls to action affect consumers’ attitudinal and behavioral engagement outcomes. Moreover, future studies could take additional steps to extract topics and sentiments in consumers’ comments and provide more valuable insights into literature since more users can express their opinions through social media [
73].
Finally, since many firms utilize external events or moments and incorporate them into social media messages to attract users, it is likely that there are special times within a year (e.g., Valentine’s Day or Christmas) that systematically affect firms’ strategies and users’ attention and interests, thereby impacting our study results. While information regarding those times and characteristics is beyond the scope of our dataset and study, future research could take one step further and explore the effects of special events and times on CSR messaging and consumer engagement.
5. Conclusions
Social media is now more of an essential than an optional component for companies for marketing practice and communications with consumers. Although much attention in the literature has been paid to enhancing marketing effectiveness and developing business capabilities using this platform, our research proposes ways that companies could contribute to sustainable development at the same time, leading to a “win–win” scenario. In particular, we suggest more specific and actionable guidelines to companies by promoting CSR-related activities and information to consumers by leveraging diverse types of calls to action in their branded messages in social media. Based on analysis of a set of branded posts on Facebook and Twitter, this study suggests that firms promote calls to action that are more directly relevant and specific to their brands, rather than external events, for more effective CSR communications, given that invitations to brand programs in CSR messages showed a positive impact on engagement, while invitations to external events did not show a significant impact. In addition, firms must also ensure that their calls to action in CSR messages are entertaining to consumers because this is the key aspect in driving engagement in social media, as evidenced by the positive impact on engagement metrics of invitation to games and the negative impact of invitation to storytelling in CSR messages. Finally, firms must use calls to action with caution and try not to utilize many items within one CSR message.
By understanding and utilizing the effects of diverse calls to action in CSR messages, companies could enhance consumers’ attitudinal and behavioral engagement in social media, followed by enhanced business capabilities and firm performance. At the same time, these practices contribute to the sustainable development goals (SDGs) for both the society and the companies themselves through consumers’ more active learning and participation in activities related to long-term development.