Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: Organizations that invest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) to improve the quality of a community or population expect a return on their investment in the form of improved brand reputation and greater consideration in the competitive environment. Homburg, Stierl, and Bornemann (2013) determined that targeted CSR activities could enhance trust and identification by organizational customers, thus fostering customer loyalty. The authors confirmed that CSR influenced client trust through loyalty and that integrating instrumental stakeholder theory with social exchange theory undergirded this link between CSR and trust. Maignan and Ferrell (2004) exhorted marketers to focus beyond consumers to other stakeholder groups and to bundle CSR activities. Evidence of agency theory was shown to exist in the buyer-supplier relationship (Eisenhardt, 1989) and was influenced by corporate reputation, CSR activities, brand equity, brand performance, B-2-B buyer consideration, and reduced transaction and customer acquisition costs. This paper considers the influence of investing valuable and extensive resources in corporate-level, socially responsible behavior on brand equity as perceived by active and prospective business-to-business client buyers in the U.S.
Authors: Susan Saurage-Altenloh, P.J.M. de Haan
Language: English
Subfield: Strategy and Management
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2185880612