| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
|
|
product or industry sector (Arens, 2004; Miller, 2010; Miller & Sinclair, 2009a; Miller & Sinclair, 2009b; Sinclair & Irani, 2005). Marketplace advocacy campaigns are becoming commonplace as businesses take a proactive role in responding to public criticism of business activities and initiatives. A quick glance around an airport, a flip through a magazine, or a couple hours of television viewing indicates the widespread use of this form of corporate advocacy. This book advances a model of marketplace advocacy influence on audiences and tests the validity of this model in the context of a coal industry–sponsored marketplace advocacy campaign. The model demonstrates how the campaign influenced perceptions of trust in the industry and heightened the salience of industry-promulgated issues among the general public, ultimately resulting in more favorable attitudes toward the coal industry in general. By incorporating environmental concern as a measure of control in the analyses, this research also provides some evidence of the moderating influence of heightened levels of environmental concern on marketplace advocacy efforts. This book concludes with a discussion of how marketplace advocacy can emphasize the role of business in society while indirectly reducing the potential for public and/or government investigations in high-risk industries, a topic that is particularly important to the fields of strategic, environmental, and political communication.