Good Customers Admire and Patronize Socially Responsible Firms

The success of consumer organizations can be attributed to many factors including consumer feedback regarding their products, services, and actions. All these are linked to the corporate social responsibility that has recently attracted significant research attention in the consumer behavior field. This vital aspect of corporate organization is not only meant to strengthen consumer loyalty by influencing their overall attitudes but also to build a mutual and positive relationship between the consumers and the organization.

Former studies on the corporate social responsibility have revealed its benefits to both the consumer and the organization. It is mainly built on the positive perception effect of the consumer behavior focusing majorly on the cognitive evaluation. However, the emotional aspect of corporate social responsibility has not been fully explored despite the considerable effects of the perceived corporate social responsibility practices on the consumer emotions that may in turn influence consumer behavior.

Herein, Spanish researchers: Dr. Sandra Castro-González, Dr. Belén Bande from University of Santiago de Compostela and Dr. Pilar Fernández-Ferrín from University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU together with Professor Takuma Kimura from the Hosei University in Japan explored the influence mechanism of corporate social responsibility and consumer behavior and how it relates with the moral-related characteristics and emotions. The authors intend to promote consumer advocacy behaviors by bridging the existing gap in the consumer responses to corporate social responsibility practices by focusing on the neglected aspects including the image and reputation. Additionally, they explored how the corporate social responsibility drives the short-term advocacy behavior focused on improving long-term financial performance. Their work is currently published in Journal of Cleaner Production.

While the existing models tend to overlook some of the underlying psychological processes, the authors proposed a mediation model based on admiration. Thus, they expected to dig deep in evaluating the moderating role of the consumer moral virtue of integrity in the relationship between the admiration feelings and the corporate social responsibility perception. Data was obtained from customers of a particular food company located in Spain.

The results indicated that the company’s corporate social responsibility practices, directly and indirectly, influence the consumer advocacy behaviors through consumer admiration of the company and also that the belief that consumer integrity indeed moderates the relationship between admiration and consumer perception of the corporate social responsibility. Therefore, these findings provide new insights that can be used to improve an organization’s classification criteria by taking into consideration the consumer values and virtues. Furthermore, this work counters the existing doubt on the economic benefits of corporate social responsibility to organizations, particularly food companies. For instance, it proves that the presence of corporate social responsibility initiatives in a food company can positively influence consumer behavior that is critical to its market survival.

In summary, the study has successfully evaluated the importance of emotions and moral virtues in enhancing the effects of corporate social responsibility on consumer advocacy behaviors. Using a food company as a better example, the research shows the benefit of corporate social responsibility practices. Thus, Professor Takuma Kimura in a statement to Advances in Engineering observed that the work justified the need for organizations to incorporate this type of action in their consumer business strategies and effectively communicate them to get positive returns.