How Corporate Social Responsibility Impacts Employee Identification, Psychological Benefit, and Customer Orientation in Hospitality Industry?

Abstract

The literature supports the notation that corporate social responsibility (CSR) plays a vital role in engaging consumers and establishing strong relationships with the organizations. However, CSR needs to be comprehensively studied as internal marketing to motivate employees to improve customer services by fulfilling their needs. Accordingly, the current study determines the impact of CSR congruence and efficacy on employee-customer identification, psychological benefit, and customer orientation in the hospitality industry of Pakistan. The data from 276 frontline employees were collected using a purposive sampling technique through self-administered questionnaires and structural equation modeling was used to test the research hypotheses. The results found that perceived CSR congruence has a stronger impact on employee-customer identification, while CSR efficacy has a relatively stronger relationship with psychological job benefits and customer orientation. This study provides a significant contribution to the extant literature on using CSR as an internal marketing strategy to improve the frontline employees’ ability to satisfy external stakeholders, i.e., customers.