Corporate Social Responsibility and Brand Equity in Mexican Small Firms

Abstract

Corporate social responsibility is a topic that has generally been analyzed and discussed in large national and transnational companies, and relatively few studies have been oriented in small and medium-sized enterprises, even though theoretical and empirical evidence has been provided that small businesses also carry out social responsibility activities. Likewise, brand equity has been scarcely related to corporate social responsibility, and there are few studies published in the current marketing literature that relate these two important constructs. Therefore, using a sample of 300 small firms and applying a structural equations model of second order, which allows to know in greater depth the relationship between corporate social responsibility and brand equity, the essential objective of this empirical study is the analysis and discussion of the effects of corporate social responsibility on the level of brand equity of small firms. The results obtained show that corporate social responsibility has a significant positive effect on the level of brand equity of small firms.