Abstract: Disclosure of brand’s social relation has been a vital antecedent in promoting social welfare. Prior studies have examined the impact of family, friends, partners, and companies’ social interaction on observers’ prosocial response, ignoring the role of brand. The existing research suggests that brand’s role of initiator and reciprocator in a reciprocal relationship can affect observers’ prosocial response. We extend the literature by examining consumers’ prosocial behavior to an observed reciprocal relation in view of mutual exchange.
As a “good is repaid by good” relation, reciprocity implies the motivation to search for self-benefits. However, the role of reciprocation (initiator vs. reciprocator) can influence consumers’ behavioral responses through their attribution of the brand’s goodness. Individuals will associate the benefits of an initial act and the actors’ characteristics in a new scenario. With the role positioning of an initiator, focal brands demonstrate added benefits and genuine goodwill to social welfare, thereby encouraging consumers’ social engagement through prosociality. In contrast, reciprocal acts may be perceived as less encouraging because of ambiguous characteristics and liquidation of liabilities. Consumers may attribute goodness to reducing indebtedness and satisfying social constraints. However, there is one boundary condition for the applicability of the main effects. Brands’ group identity moderates the relationship between the role of reciprocity and consumers’ prosocial behavior. Specifically, brands’ role of reciprocator (vs. initiator) produces a greater effect on consumers’ prosociality when the brand owns a dissociative out-group identity (vs. membership identity).
One secondary data analysis and four experiments were used to test the framework. A dataset of Weibo, a Chinese social media platform, first proved the main effect and the interaction effect. In experiments 1 and 2, two designed between-subjects experiments respectively representing brand-brand/-other consumer relations were conducted. Results replicated the asymmetry of reciprocity on prosocial behaviors, and established the underlying mechanism of intrinsic motivation, namely, the brand engages in reciprocity due to dispositional factors. Experiment 3 excluded the alternative explanation of the framing effect. The last study, including one experiment representing brand-brand relations, demonstrated that when a brand has a dissociative out-group identity, the relationship between the role of reciprocation and consumers’ prosocial behavior would be reversed.
In the study, we find that the initiator effect remains effective in reciprocal exchange, in terms of consumers’ prosocial responses. Our finding expands the theoretical perspective of asymmetric effect and transmission effect of reciprocity, and explores antecedents of prosociality. The finding promotes the smooth flow of resources and offers suggestions for brand sustainable marketing.

Key words: prosocial behavior, reciprocity, initiator, reciprocator, group identity