Research On The Influence Of Corporate Philanthropy On Customer Loyalty From The Perspective Of Consumers:the Mediating Role Of Customer Identification

With the deepening of economic globalization,the all-around competition among enterprises makes the operators realize that the pure product competition and price competition is a drop in the ocean.By means of corporate social activities to improve the competitive advantage,gain social recognition and build a sustainable and healthy customer relationship is the key to the long-term prosperity of the enterprise.Corporate philanthropy is an effective way to reflect the responsibility of enterprises,so the degree of recognition and attention among the public is getting higher and higher.Enterprises therefore attach more importance to the added value brought by charitable acts,and expect to attract more loyal customers through charitable activities and gain advantages in market competition.However,because many enterprises do not carry out reasonable planning for their charitable activities,the results are ineffective,and the blind and fragmented operation leads to the waste of charitable resources and low public satisfaction.From the perspective of the long-term development of an enterprise,having good customer loyalty is an important condition for an enterprise to thrive,and gaining customer recognition in the fiercely competitive market has become an important strategy for an enterprise.Therefore,it is indeed necessary for enterprises to properly regulate and plan their philanthropic behaviors to meet the needs of the public,so as to achieve a series of goals such as customer recognition and loyalty to the enterprise.As a consequence,making a thorough inquiry between the relationship of corporate philanthropy,customer identification and customer loyalty from the perspective of consumers has a profound theoretical and practical meaning to improve customer loyalty through charitable behavior.In order to theoretically discuss the relationship between the three,this paper generalizes the related research at home and abroad,puts forward the research hypothesis and establishes the theoretical model,takes corporate philanthropy as the independent variable,customer identification as the intermediary variable and customer loyalty as the dependent variable.Based on the previous literature,this paper divides corporate philanthropy into five dimensions: donation of charitable resources,choice of charity field,charity timing,time span of charity and moderate publicity of charity,and selects behavioral loyalty and attitudinal loyalty as the two dimensions of customer loyalty.With the help of previous findings and small sample pre-survey,this paper sets out the final formal questionnaire.In this paper,the target enterprise is the beverage industry which is familiar to consumers.In this paper,305 valid questionnaires were obtained from beverage consumers,and then the data and model were analyzed and tested by using SPSS20.0 and AMOS24.0 software.Finally,we get the following conclusions:(1)The five dimensions of corporate philanthropy(moderate publicity of charity,charity timing,time span of charity,donation of charitable resources and choice of charity field)all have a significant positive impact on customer identification.(2)Customer identification has a conspicuous positive influence on the two dimensions of customer loyalty(behavioral loyalty and attitudinal loyalty).(3)The five dimensions of corporate philanthropy have conspicuous positive influences on the two dimensions of customer loyalty respectively.(4)Customer identification plays a mediating role in the relationship between corporate philanthropy and customer loyalty,indicating that corporate philanthropy indirectly affects customer loyalty through customer identification.(5)The most concerned areas of corporate philanthropy are disaster relief,education and environmental protection.The corporate philanthropic resources recognized by consumers are still based on funds.Most consumers learn about corporate philanthropy from Internet media,followed by news reports,daily chat and advertisements.Consumers mostly expect companies to improve in areas such as openness and continuity.In the end,on the basis of research conclusions,this paper proposes several suggestions for enterprises to carry out charity activities to enhance customer identification and loyalty: Change the concept of charity,and actively participate in charity activities;Encourage consumers to take part in charity and strengthen their sense of identity;Reasonable planning of charitable behavior to enhance customer loyalty.