An Integrative Framework to Understand How CSR Affects Customer Loyalty through Identification, Emotions and Satisfaction

Abstract

Because previous scholars have offered few comprehensive models to understand the benefits of corporate social responsibility image in terms of customer behaviour, the authors of this paper propose a hierarchy of effects model to study how customer perceptions of the social responsibility of companies influence customer affective and conative responses in a service context. The authors test a structural equation model using information collected directly from 1,124 customers of banking services in Spain.The findings demonstrate that corporate social responsibility image influences customer identification with the company, the emotions evoked by the company and satisfaction positively. Identification also influences the emotions generated by the service performance and customer satisfaction determines loyalty behaviour. The findings have significant implications for service managers because they demonstrate that there are two paths to explain the satisfaction and loyalty of service customers. The first path is composed of the beliefs and emotions generated by the company at the institutional level. The second path is composed of the thoughts, attitudes, emotions and feelings generated by the company's services.

From perceptual corporate sustainability to customer loyalty: a multi-sectorial investigation in a developing country

“…The number of relevant studies on the relationship in the retail banking industry is significantly larger than in the mobile telecommunications sector, the research focus being on developed countries such as Spain (Matute-Vallejo, Bravo, & Pina, 2011;Pérez, de los Salmones, & del Bosque, 2013;Pérez & del Bosque, 2015), Austria (Öberseder, Schlegelmilch, Murphy, & Gruber, 2014), the U.S.A. (Choi & La, 2013;Walsh & Beatty, 2007), Australia (Chomvilailuk & Butcher, 2014) and the U.K. (Ruiz et al, 2016). Thus, Matute-Vallejo et al (2011), as well as and Pérez and del Bosque (2015), concluded that the social and environmental facets of perceptual corporate sustainability positively impact customer loyalty, the relationship being mediated by consumer-company identification and customer satisfaction.…”

Measuring Corporate Social Responsibility in Sport Industry: Development and Validation of Measurement Scale

“…These two features are outlined in the European Commission's (2002) definition of CSR as the voluntary integration by organizations of social and environmental concerns in their business processes and their relationships with their stakeholders (25) . This concept of CSR stresses that organizations should pay special attention to economic, social, and environmental aspects in their strategic planning (26)(27)(28).…”

Corporate Social Responsibility Drivers and Barriers According to Managers’ Perception; Evidence from Spanish Firms

“…Highlighted aspects include the country-level institutional factors [92], the role that governments can play [93], institutional pressure [10,94] and developing an institutional framework [8]. (3) Reputation management: CSR has a positive effect on corporate reputation [36], and lowering the cost of capital [95], on loyalty [29] with the integration of the organization into its host community [27] on improving firms' reputations in relation to their stakeholders [96,97] and their performance in the eyes of governments [98]. This is also one of the most commonly mentioned aspects as a CSR driver, cited in 13.6% of the papers.…”

“…This study aims to fill some of these gaps by developing a tool that enables us to explain the socially responsible behavior of companies, considering CSR in relation to its drivers/barriers. This is achieved by analyzing solidarity [27], preventing incident-induced reputation risks [28], promoting customer loyalty [29], etc. On the other hand, based on instrumental stakeholder theory, most of the barriers that hinder the development of CSR in firms are related to property rights and the maximization of shareholder value [14,21].…”