Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 that started in January 2020 has continued last two years. Yet, the situation is not optimistic in 2022 due to the spread of Omicron and its sub-mutations. Accordingly, the importance of personal quarantine, such as social distancing, hand washing, and wearing a mask, is highly expected for the time being. Companies are also emphasizing the importance of personal quarantine through advertisements to participate in the efforts of the entire society to overcome COVID-19. Given the situation, this study tested the possibility that mask-wearing of endorsers appearing in video ads can be considered as a socially responsible activity as there is no restriction on mask-wearing of the endorsers unlike the real-world situations. Mask-wearing of the endorsers may even lower the completeness of the ads. It is likely, therefore, that consumers seeing an ad in which endorsers wear masks attribute the company’s motive of making the ad to the pursuit to contribute to the society, that is, ‘value-oriented’. Further, the consumers are expected to attribute the company’s motive of participating in other socially responsible activities to being ‘value-oriented’. According to previous studies, the way consumers attribute a company’s participation in socially responsible activities affects the consumers’ perception of the company’s ‘social responsibility.’ Further, the perception affects their various responses (e.g., attitudes toward the ad, attitudes toward the product, purchase intention, brand loyalty, etc.). Of the responses, this study examined how customers’ brand loyalty is affected when seeing a video ad in which endorsers wear masks. This is because companies are increasingly interested in maintaining and managing existing customers as well as gaining new customers. From the experiment conducted to test the hypotheses, it was found as expected that the way existing customers attributed a company’s motive of participating in socially responsible activities affected the customers’ perception of the company’s social responsibility, and ultimately their brand loyalty. Contrary to the expectation, however, mask-wearing of endorsers appearing in the video ad tested had no impact on the way the customers attributed the company’s motive of participating in socially responsible activities. Consequently, neither the customers’ perception of the company’s social responsibility nor their brand loyalty were affected. Theoretical and practical implications of the result were presented.