Research On The Relationship Between The Corporate Social Responsibility,Brand Reputation And Brand Equity From Consumers’ Perspective

During the period of the1970s to the1980s, there was a great debate about whether companies should shoulder social responsibility in the western academics. Since then, it has been well known in the theoretical session and practice session that it is reasonable and necessary that enterprises should shoulder social responsibility. Since the1980s, the concept of corporate social responsibility has come into China. With the development of social economy, the value that enterprises regard economic gains as the only goal has been queried. After the frequently occurring events of food safety incidents, encroaching on the interests of consumers, and violation of employees’ rights due to the lack of corporate social responsibility, the concept of corporate social responsibility has attracted attentions from not only domestic academic but also consumers. Consumers have started to pay attention on product and service, besides, they also keep a watchful eye on whether the companies have social morality and have the courage to bear the social responsibility. The enterprises’ social responsibility has become an important basis for customers to evaluate the enterprises and their products. Whether the companies have courage to bear the social responsibility affects the brand’s reputation and the loyalty and trust of customers for brands. In the world of business, global competition turns white-hot, and the problem of product homogeneity is very serious. In such an environment and background, the brand is the important intangible assets of enterprises and has been attracting more and more attention. If an enterprise has a good brand reputation, it will obtain public praise, the loyalty and trust of brand from customers will be strengthened, and thus the competitiveness of the enterprise will be enhanced. Therefore, the objective of this study is to discuss the relevant issues of corporate social responsibility and brand.In recent years, researchers made many studies on corporate social responsibility from the aspects of content, way, and method, and achieved fruitful results. However, the previous studies only paid attentions on the relationships between corporate social responsibility and gains from economic benefit or customer behavior, which are intuitive and short-acting. Few studies about long-term relationships between corporate social responsibility and brand reputation or brand equity are carried out.In this study, the interrelation between enterprises’ social responsibility and their brand assets will be analyzed in the consumer perspective. The research framework of "enterprises’ social responsibility-brand reputation-brand equity" will be developed from the consumer perspective, and empirical analysis will be applied to verify the proposed model and hypothesis.In this thesis, a comprehensive review was made to demonstrate the research status and results of corporate social responsibility, brand reputation, and brand equity from the existing literature. Firstly, the information of corporate social responsibility including reasons why it was proposed, its definition from scholars, its measurement, and its relevant theoretical basis were introduced. Secondly, the previous studies of brand reputation were reviewed to introduce its definition, function, and measuring method. Thirdly, the previous studies of brand equity including the definition and constitutional dimension were also summarized. Finally, the interrelations among enterprises’ social responsibility, brand reputation, and brand equity were presented.According to the comprehensive review, it was found that the corporate social responsibility had significantly positive impacts on the company’s reputation. Thus, in this study, it was assumed that the corporate social responsibility would also affect the brand reputation which was considered as an important part of brand reputation. Moreover, the relationships between corporate social responsibility and brand equity or partial constitutional dimension of brand equity got attentions from many scholars, and a number of research results were obtained. Hence, the hypothesis that corporate social responsibility significantly affected brand equity was built. In addition, the support degree of consumers to corporate social responsibility as the moderator between corporate social responsibility and consumer response, its adjustment function had been confirmed by some scholars. In this research, the support degree of consumers to corporate social responsibility was regarded as the moderator between corporate social responsibility and consumer response, and the empirical study was applied to analyze its adjustment function.After the development of models and hypotheses, scale questionnaires were designed based on domestic and foreign scale questionnaires with high reliability and validity. The essential data was collected through extensive questionnaire. Next, the SPSS software was used to analyze data through reliability and validity analysis, factor analysis, correlation analysis, regression analysis, and variance analysis. The results were applied to verify the interrelations among the corporate social responsibility, brand reputation and brand equity. The inclusions of this research include follows:(1) that the corporate social responsibility and its three constitutional dimensions (consumer responsibility, environmental responsibility, and philanthropic responsibility) had significantly positive impacts on the brand reputation. Praise from consumers to the brand and the brand reputation would increase if enterprises actively took social responsibility.(2) the brand reputation had significantly positive impacts on brand equity and its four constitutional dimensions. The increase of brand reputation could improve the brand popularity, so that consumers had a positive perception on the quality of the product. Besides, the enhancement of consumer loyalty could result in that customers had a wealth of good association to the brand.(3) the three constitutional dimensions of corporate social responsibility had significantly positive impacts on the brand equity and its four constitutional dimensions. It was indicated that the brand equity would increase if enterprises actively bore social responsibility.(4) the brand reputation was a partial mediator between the relation of corporate social responsibility and brand equity.(5) the support degree of consumers had a positive adjustment in the process of corporate social responsibility influencing brand reputation. In this study, the interrelations among corporate social responsibility, brand reputation, and brand equity were clarified, and the related theory research was enriched. The obtained results could provide guidance for enterprises to increase the brand reputation and brand equity through fulfilling their social responsibility.In summary, there are several innovations of this paper:(1)clear the dimension of corporate social responsibility from the perspective of consumers.The study pointed out that the responsibility which consumers care about is the consumer responsibility,charity responsibility and environmental responsibility.This understanding could help enterprises enhance competitiveness by fulfilling social responsibility.(2)expand the value of corporate social responsibility to brand reputation and brand equity.Through empirical analysis,this study confirmed the important impact of CSR on brand reputation and brand equity.(3)The study comfirm the moderating effect of the degree of consumer support on CSR and brand reputation. This article refers the consumer support as moderator to analyze the impact of corporate social responsibility on brand reputation.(4)The research analysis the influence of each dimension of corporate social responsibility to brand equity and use the brand’s reputation as mediator to explain the mechanism of corporate social responsibility on brand equity better.