Employee‐sharing and consumers' brand attitudes during COVID‐19: A CSR perspective

Abstract

The rapid proliferation of COVID‐19 has dealt a heavy blow to many companies. Under these circumstances, employee‐sharing has become a valuable strategy to help enterprises resume work and production. Based on the event system theory, we explored the impact of employee‐sharing event strength on consumers' brand attitudes during the COVID‐19 pandemic through a corporate social responsibility (CSR) lens. Also, we verified that employee‐sharing event strength during the COVID‐19 pandemic positively affected consumers' internal (ICSR) and external (ECSR) perceptions of enterprises, improving consumers' brand attitudes and validating the positive moderating effect of customer‐company identification. Thus, this study provides theoretical insights and managerial implications for CSR.