Empirical Study On The Relationship Between Corporate Social Responsibility And Consumers Purchase Intention In Hotel Industry

With the development of opening and reform policy for 30 years, the Chinese hotel industry keeps a successive and rapid developing tendency both in industry scale and the enterprise style which has become a new growth pole in the national economy.From 2004 on, the giant of the international tourism hotel industry has intensified more efforts in the investment to China, meanwhile, the domestic tourism hotel also accelerate the pace for reorganization and groping development which displays a bright prospect of China's tourism hotel industry.With the growing number of hotels, the hotel faces enormous pressure in the terms of maintaining economic benefits and performing the social responsibility. In 2010, the occurring cases of "erotic activities involved" and "underworld activities involved" in the domestic high-star hotel, had refocused the concerning of the people about the hotel's social responsibility.How can the hotels perform their social responsibility effectively, and how to maintain "economic man" and "social" balance? The above issues have been the top concerns between academic circles and hotel management practice circles. Under such circumstance, from the perspective of the consumers which mostly influence the hotels, and based on their assessment of the hotels' social responsibility, the thesis studies the hotels' social responsibility which influences the clients' buying intention. Through the consumers' influence, they can boost the hotels performing the social responsibility as well as the sustainable development for the hotel industry.To probe the complicated relationship between the hotels' social responsibility and the consumer's purchase intention, after referred to the large number of domestic and international literature, this study proposes the theoretical model and related assumptions between hotel social responsibility, hotel capacity, consumer-company identification, corporate evaluation and purchase intention. The thesis combines the theoretical analysis and empirical research method together, through the on spot and online issued questionnaires in Guangzhou, Changsha, Taian, Xiangtan, and a total of 520 questionnaires are valid. It analyzes the investigation data by use of statistical software such as SPSS and LISREL, then verifies the theoretical model and related assumptions proposed in this study. Based on the theoretical analysis and empirical research, the thesis concludes as followings:(1)The hotel social responsibility is a multi-level structure, including the five sub-factors: charitable responsibility, employee responsibility, customer responsibility, community responsibility, environmental protection responsibility;(2)The hotel social responsibility and the hotel capacity are important which affect the consumers' buying intention;(3)The Consumer's evaluation and recognition to the hotel plays an important role in the chain of the hotel social responsibility and consumer's purchase intention;(4)The hotel's self-capacity, through the hotel's evaluation and the consumer -company recognition, has an indirect influence on the consumer's purchase intention;(5)The hotel's social responsibility and its self-capacity have a positive correlation;(6)The correlation influence between the hotel's social responsibility and its self-capacity affects the buying intention significantly.The the sis's Academic contribution and innovation is mainly reflected in:firstly, it analyzes and verifies the complex multi-level structure of the hotel's social responsibility; Secondly, it builds a theoretical model about the hotel' social responsibility, hotel capacity, consumers -company identification, hotel evaluation and purchase intention; Thirdly, it develops the hotel social responsibility scale; Fourthly, it verifies that the interaction between the hotel capacity and the social responsibility has no significant direct impact on the purchase intention.This thesis focuses on the relationship between the hotel's social responsibility and the customer's purchase intention. However, in the actual consumption environment, there are many complicated factors that affect customer buying intention, so this study can not control all the factors. As time and funding is limited, and it's difficult to choose accurate and serious testees, together with the limitations of statistical analysis, the conclusions of this thesis are not appropriate to apply for all consumers and all the low-star or no-star hotels; Finally, regarding to the measurement tools, the thesis takes the self-made scale for the hotels' social responsibility questionnaire, although has some reliability and validity, still yet for perfection, which may have some impact on the study results. Therefore, the study between the hotel's social responsibility and the consumer's purchase intention is a filed which needs more theoretical and empirical study.