Empirical Study On The Relationship Between Corporate Social Responsibility And Customer Loyalty

In 2008, financial crisis, the Sichuan earthquake and the Sanlu milk powder incident made the word "corporate social responsibility" come into the social consciousness of the general public quickly from an academic perspective.In the context of economic globalization, enterprises'sustainable development couldn't be separated from the positive performance of corporate social responsibility(hereafter CSR), and building a harmonious society couldn't be separated from the promotion of CSR, corporate social responsibility are more and more concerned by government, society, firms and people. Adam. Smith has a well-known enterprises profit-maximizing theory which suggests that the pursuit of profit maximization is the sole purpose of business. However, the realization of corporate profits ultimately depends on the customer's choice, as consumers have "the right to vote with the money." Then whether CSR would influence consumer's purchase decisions or not, and whether CSR would affect customer satisfaction and loyalty? That's an very important issue for this study.Western scholars has a long research history on CSR, however, with the changes of the economic environment, human environment and public awareness, the limitations of existing research on CSR are gradually becoming evident. At the same time, due to the practice of CSR have strong local characteristics influenced by the country's historical and cultural traditions greatly, under the new historical conditions, the studies of CSR shine with new vitality.Foreign studies on CSR from consumer perspective with the empirical methods of questionnaires, experimental methods and so on focused on nearly a decade, the similar studies in China began in 2005. The themes of these studies focused on the foundation of CSR indicators from consumer perspective, the relationship between CSR or one or two aspects of CSR and consumers'responds, and the relationship between CSR and customer loyalty as well as the market value and so on. The literature of Empirical Research on CSR from the consumer perspective is very little, and among the literature I acquired, the researches which make corporate reputation be a mediate variable haven't been found. In this study we will learn from those existing research results at home and abroad, explore the relationship between CSR and customer loyalty under Chinese cultural background and check the rationality of corporate reputation as intermediate variable.Specifically, the main research contents of this study include: (1) Studying on the dimension of corporate social responsibility from consumer perspective. Carroll divided CSR into economic, legal, moral, charitable responsibility; according to stakeholder theory, CSR include the responsibilities for shareholders, employees, consumers, the community, etc.; Well, from the consumer's point of view, which aspects of CSR will be considered by Chinese people when they are purchasing?(2) Studying the impact of the various dimensions of CSR on customer loyalty and Examining whether the corporate reputation is a intermediate variables.(3) Corporate reputation can be divided by various methods. In this study corporate reputation are divided into two dimensions of cognitive and affective, which will be verified reasonable or not by survey data. In addition, the relationship between these two dimensions will be confirmed.(4) Analyzing the direct, indirect and total effect between the CSR and customer loyalty.(5) Analyzing the effect of individual distinctions(such as gender, age, education, income and occupation) to the customer perception of CSR.Based on the above researches, we will give government and firms some advices to promote the tasks of CSR.The author selects consumers aged over 18 as sample and designs questionnaire based on literature review. We use CITC analysis, factor analysis, analysis of variances and structural equations modeling analysis to deal with investigation data and test the hypothesis, we get the following research conclusions:(1) From consumers'perspective, CSR include four dimensions, such as economical responsibility, the enterprise responsibility for consumers, enterprise's legal liability and charitable responsibility. The responsibility for employees and environment responsibility are very important contents of CSR, however, when consumers are buying products they wouldn't consider these two elements.(2) Corporate reputation is an intermediate variable between CSR and customer loyalty. It's reasonable that corporate reputation is divided into two dimensions of cognitive and affective, and cognitive reputation has a direct positive effect on affective reputation.(3) Through structural equation modeling analysis, in this study we compared the direct model and indirect model A of customer satisfaction as an intermediate variable with indirect model B of customer satisfactory and corporate reputation as two intermediate variables, and we modified the indirect model B and got the best model. We found that the economical responsibility has a direct impact on customer satisfaction, both legal responsibility and charitable responsibility haven't direct impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty, economical responsibility, corporate responsibility, legal responsibility and charitable responsibility all have indirect impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty.(4) Economic responsibility, responsibility for consumers, legal responsibility and charitable responsibility have direct and indirect effects on cognitive reputation, affective reputation, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. These four factors are significantly inter-correlation.(5) All scores for every aspect of CSR performance were above 4 point, indicating that consumers recognized mobile phone enterprises'performance of CSR. The study found that individual factors influence consumers'perceptions of CSR, consumers with different gender, age, average monthly income and education levels have different perceptions of CSR.