Understanding the Impact of Sustainability and CSR Information in D2C Online Shops on Consumer Attitudes and Behavior – A Literature Review

Abstract

Many brands nowadays use direct-to-consumer channels such as proprietary online shops, in order to provide information related to their sustainability and CSR initiatives and to increase consumers’ perceptions of legitimacy of the company and its products. However, so far little is known about the effects of such information on consumer attitudes and behavior. This implies that the true benefit of S/CSR initiatives is currently not well understood by most companies and resource allocation in this area may be distorted. Therefore, in this literature review we consolidate and map existing research that can inform our understanding of this phenomenon. By analyzing a sample of 46 papers we find that research on the topic in a direct-to-consumer context is sparse, but that theories and empirical evidence from related contexts can help us grasp the issue to some extent.