Empathy can increase customer equity related to pro-social brands

Reducing the target customers' sensitivity to price is one way in which a firm can increase customer equity. To this end, actions related to corporate social responsibility (CSR) can invoke a sense of empathy among customers who respond to "pro-social products with an increased,willingness to pay (WTP). The purpose of this paper is therefore to determine the emotional mechanism of empathy and its neural correlates underlying consumers' positive reactions to pro-social marketing, which can increase WTP and customer equity. Study 1 is a behavioral study that intends to discover the underlying psychological mechanism of emotional empathy through which a message communicating CSR actions can increase customers' WTP for pro-social products. A neuromarketing study was conducted using electroencephalogram (EEG) to uncover the neural mechanism for customer empathy in response to CSR messages as enhanced theta-band activities of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a frontal brain area that previous neuroscience research has linked to the affective empathic response. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.