The Impact Of Corporate Social Responsibility On Consumer Response Across Product Categories

With today's increasing competition, enterprises can not exist and develop without the support of consumers, which certainly need the psychological and behavioral responses from consumers. Consumers are not aware of the enterprise, so they always rely on other sources of information to judge the enterprises, such as corporate social responsibility information. Meanwhile, the company invested a lot of time, manpower and capital into social practice, which will be eager to understand the response consumer confront corporate social responsibility. So, will corporate social responsibility influence consumer response, will the relationship across product categories be affected? The studies of considerable domestic and foreign scholars show that consumer responses have significant positive effects on corporate social responsibility. Although many theories study the relationship between corporate social responsibility and consumer response, and study the moderating role of personal characteristics and price, but little of study consider the product category as a moderating variable. Therefore, it is meaningful that analyzing the impact corporate social responsibility has on consumer response and exploring the moderating role of product categories, both in deepening and expanding the existing theory, and solving corporate problems, promoting corporate social responsibility practices, ensuring the sustainable enterprise development, realizing the comprehensive interests of society.Chapter I: Introduction. This chapter introduces the research background, purpose and significance, and research structural framework. Through review of current theories and research of enterprise problems about operation, this paper point out the importance of corporate social responsibility and consumer response, the necessity of studying the moderating role of product categories. That is to say, this paper explain the meaning and purpose from both theoretical and practical aspects.Chapter II: Literature Review. This chapter reviews theoretical summary of corporate social responsibility, consumer response, product categories and the relationship between corporate social responsibility and consumer response, understands the progress of research ,which is helpful to find theoretical gaps and lay a solid theoretical foundation for this paper. Firstly, in the aspect of corporate social responsibility theories, this chapter explains the concept, the content, the evaluation and the relationship with marketing. Secondly, in the aspect of consumer response theories, this chapter explains the concept, the manifestation and influencing factors. Thirdly, in the aspect of product categories theories, this chapter explains the dividing standard and the theoretical value between corporate social responsibility and consumer response. Finally, this paper explains existing theories on the positive or negative relationship between corporate social responsibility and consumer response.Chapter III: Research Design and Methods. This chapter introduces the research object, research methods, theoretical framework and the proposed hypothesis. Firstly, through review and assessment of extensive literature, this chapter explains the close contact between corporate social responsibility and consumer response, the impact the product category have on that relationship, establishes theoretical framework of this study, and proposes the hypothesis: corporate social responsibility have positive impact on the consumer response; corporate social responsibility have positive effects on consumer-company identification ; corporate social responsibility have positive impact on consumer buying behavior; beyond different products category ,the impact corporate social responsibility have on consumer response is different; compared to buying utilitarian products, when buying hedonic products, corporate social responsibility impact consumer-company identification more strongly; compared to buying utilitarian products, when buying hedonic products ,corporate social responsibility influence consumer buying behavior more strongly. Secondly, according to the characteristics of this research study, we determine the methods of literature study, questionnaires and statistical analysis. Thirdly, this chapter use scale of corporate social responsibility and consumer response, design questionnaires, complete the design of this study.Chapter IV: Results and discussion. Firstly, this chapter describes all kinds of consumers is the object of the questionnaire, the sample size is 304, and a sample of descriptive statistics, including descriptive statistics on characteristics of respondents, consumer response and factors of consumer response. Secondly, this paper use SPSS15.0 and Amos7.0 to test the reliability and validity of the scale, results show that scale has good reliability and validity. Thirdly, this chapter test hypothesis, including the model fit test and hypothesis test. Model fit test use Amos7.0 analysis, the hypothesis test use SPSS regression analysis by group. The result shows that the model fit is good. Regression analysis showed that: in the Standardized regression coefficients, the Beta values are greater than 0.79, on a significant level (p <0.001), that is to say, corporate social responsibility has significant effect on consumer response. Meanwhile, compared to group of utilitarian products, in the group of hedonic products, regression equation explains the variance in consumer response more significantly , the standardized regression coefficients is more significant.Chapter V: Conclusions and future directions. Firstly, this chapter described the conclusion of this paper, that is to say, corporate social responsibility has significant positive effects on consumer response, consume-company identification and purchase behavior. Compared to buying utilitarian products, when buying hedonic products, corporate social responsibility impact consumer-company identification more strongly. Compared to buying utilitarian products, when buying hedonic products, corporate social responsibility influence consumer buying behavior more strongly. As direct business stakeholders, consumers play an important role to promote the practice of corporate social responsibility, but the psychological response is stronger than behavioral response. Secondly, this chapter shows the limitations of this study, such as ignoring the possibility of the existence of industry and regional differences; research findings of quasi-experimental method still need to be test through real companies. Thirdly, this chapter shows future research directions, findings replicate in the practical enterprise; divide the dimension of corporate social responsibilities, to explore the impact the specific behavior of the social responsibility have on consumer response.