Turning corporate social responsibility into opportunity: A study of stakeholder orientation and marketing

Marketers adopting the stakeholder concept shift the firm's focus to a broader set of stakeholders than just customers--including suppliers, employees, regulators, shareholders, and the local community. This research examines the incorporation of stakeholder issues in corporate marketing strategy to explain firm performance. Grounded in stakeholder theory, the study provides a conceptualization of stakeholder orientation based on cultural values that is distinctive from stakeholder responsiveness and examines the relationship of stakeholder responsiveness to firm performance. The study determines the mediating role of marketing outcomes on the impact of stakeholder responsiveness on firm performance. Inclusion of a measure for "globalness" provides for an understanding of the moderating effects of global operations on the ability for a firm to respond to multiple stakeholders. Multiple regression analysis tests hypotheses using a data set consisting of qualitative data obtained from corporate documents and quantitative data from respected secondary sources.;The results of this research have implications to managers seeking to balance multiple stakeholders in the current global environment. The results show that firms focusing attention on more than two stakeholder groups exhibit greater corporate social responsibly behaviors and marketing outcomes. However, there is a slight decrease in outcomes as firms spread attention among five or more stakeholder groups, indicating the need to prioritize stakeholder groups. Consistent with market orientation, firms focusing on customers are less likely to behave irresponsibly towards the community and other stakeholder groups. Therefore, firms should continue to include customers as a primary stakeholder.;Global operations influence the ability for firms to respond to multiple stakeholders. Findings show that a customer orientation leads to greater responsiveness when the number of countries is higher. However, implementing programs and policies in response to employees and shareholders is more difficult when the percent of international sales and dependence on offshore suppliers increases.;This research provides insights in the relationship between stakeholder responsiveness on customer satisfaction, innovation, and reputation beyond that of prior studies. This study shows that harmful activities have a greater effect of lowering customer satisfaction than social responsiveness has on increasing customer satisfaction. Results from this study also suggest that market-based performance is affected by lower customer satisfaction from negative responsiveness. This research shows that positive social responsiveness increases firm performance through enhanced reputation, but negative reputational activities without positive actions reduce both reputation and financial performance. Firms able to respond to multiple stakeholders through socially responsive actions experience greater innovation. Results show that responsiveness to customers, employees, and the community can increase innovation, while attention to regulatory agencies can decrease innovation, through increased costs and restrictions.