Social Initiatives in the Digital Environment as Factors of Brand Development and Consumer Trust

Abstract

The relationship between brands’ social activity in the digital environment and consumer loyalty is an important issue in the development of digital brand communication. This study examines whether differences in the intensity of brands’ social initiatives in the digital environment are associated with differences in consumer loyalty. The purpose of the study is to empirically assess the relationship between the number of social initiatives communicated through digital channels and the Net Promoter Score (NPS) among leading global brands. The empirical analysis is based on a cross-sectional sample of 10 global brands included in the Brand Finance Global 500 ranking. Consumer loyalty is operationalized using NPS, which reflects consumers’ willingness to recommend a brand. Brands’ social activity is measured by the number of distinct social initiatives identified through a structured content analysis of official brand websites and verified social media accounts. Social, environmental, charitable, educational, humanitarian, and community-oriented initiatives were included, while commercial campaigns without a distinct social or environmental component were excluded. Descriptive statistics were used to characterise the distribution of the variables, Pearson correlation analysis was employed to assess the direction and strength of their linear relationship, and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression was applied to estimate the association between the number of social initiatives and NPS and determine the explanatory power of the model. The results reveal a strong positive and statistically significant association between the number of social initiatives and NPS. The estimated regression coefficient is 5.405, indicating that one additional identified social initiative is associated with an approximately 5.4-point higher NPS within the analysed sample. The regression model is statistically significant (F = 22.04, p = 0.0016) and explains approximately 73.4% of the cross-brand variation in NPS (R² = 0.734; adjusted R² = 0.700). These results provide quantitative brand-level evidence of a relationship between the intensity of social activity communicated through digital channels and consumer loyalty. The findings can support brand managers in integrating social initiatives into digital communication strategies and in monitoring such activities together with consumer loyalty indicators. At the same time, managerial decisions should consider not only the number of initiatives but also their content, relevance, and alignment with brand strategy and target audiences. Given the cross-sectional design and limited sample size, the identified relationship should be interpreted as an association rather than a causal effect.