Value instantiation: how to overcome the value conflict in promoting luxury brands with CSR initiatives

When luxury brands (exuding self-enhancement values) incorporate CSR (eliciting self-transcendence values) in their brand platform, they are blending opposing values into their marketing strategies, often resulting in negative responses from consumers. This research provides a solution to this problem—“value instantiation,” which encourages people to generate reasons for a value and to pursue it via a concrete example. We introduce the following two approaches for instantiating self-transcendence values in the context of self-enhancement value pursuit: (1) exposing consumers to philanthropic activities of self-enhancement-driven celebrities (study 1) and (2) encouraging consumers to visualize themselves engaging in philanthropic activities while pursuing self-enhancement values (study 2). We show that such value instantiation, which promotes the integration of the values, reduces unfavorable responses to a luxury brand’s product promoted with CSR appeals, particularly among the core consumers of luxury brands, who are self-enhancement driven, and thus would respond to the CSR appeals most negatively.