Using Social Media as a Medium for CSR Communication, to Induce Consumer–Brand Relationship in the Banking Sector of a Developing Economy

Abstract

Social media has emerged as a flexible and interactive communication medium in the present digital era. Contemporary businesses use social media to achieve different communication objectives. However, using social media as a communication medium for corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication with stakeholders like, consumers is not well-explored in the existing literature. Furthermore, prior studies have also failed to consider the blend of CSR communication and social media to achieve consumer-related outcomes, for example, their loyalty and purchase likelihood. To this end, the objective of this study is to examine the relationship of the CSR communication of a bank through social media with consumer loyalty and purchase intention. The current study also proposes brand admiration as a potential mediator between this relationship. The data were collected from the banking consumers through a self-administered questionnaire in a developing economy. The data were analyzed through the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique using AMOS software. The results of the current survey confirmed that CSR communication of a bank on social media has direct and indirect, via brand admiration, relations with consumer loyalty, and purchase intentions. The outcomes of this survey will be helpful for the policymakers to understand the importance of CSR communication on social media to enhance the loyalty, and purchase intention of banking consumers.

The perception of using social media – a comparison of entrepreneurs implementing CSR in managerial practice and other entrepreneurs in selected V4 countries

“…Through social media, organizations have recently been meaningfully communicating with their consumers. An interactive and flexible social media environment allows consumers to engage meaningfully with brands (Gupta et al, 2021). Much of the success of a progressive business depends on skills, experience, and enterprise management tools.…”

“…Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) point to the considerable advantage of social networks for businesses, namely the opportunity to get feedback. The importance of social media is clear to the organization for communication in the CAP field because, through social media, organizations could convince their consumers and gain the position of a socially responsible organization (Gupta et al, 2021).…”

Corporate Social Responsibility and Proenvironmental Behaviour in Employees: Evidence in Acapulco, Mexico

“…CSR is the subject of extensive research [19][20][21][22]; some authors even classified the main theories and approaches around its benefits, political action, social demands, and ethical values [12,20,23]. In the past two decades, this research has considerably grown [19,21,24], for example, studies that quantify the willingness to pay for CSR [25]; consumers subjected to the three CSR communication factors of message content, message style, and praise tactics [26]; other forms of marketing [27,28]; its positive relationship to performance [29][30][31][32] and financial performance [33][34][35], the credibility of CSR in Europe reporting on [36] CSR's efforts and its negative effects on its stakeholders [37]; and a proposal for a strategic management system for corporate environmental responsibility [38]. However, there is still little research on the relationship between CSR and employees, for example, by studying the degree of employee organisational commitment and organisational performance [39], spiritual leadership and intrinsic motivation [40], commitment [41], prosocial behaviour [42], and perceptions [43,44] on work behaviour [45] and relationship marketing [46].…”

The Brand Sustainability Obstacle: Viewpoint Incompatibility and Consumer Boycott

“…Companies use social media as a channel for convenient marketing communication. They participate in social issues, strengthen their brand image, and practice CSR communication to maintain para-social relationships (PSR) with their customers [10].…”

“…Consumers can also easily express their opinions on social media as word-of-mouth. Social media also enables consumers to share their comments about a product or service [10]. Consumers usually search for word-of-mouth before choosing a product to purchase [11].…”