Corporate social responsability and loyalty in services sector - Esic

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corporate social responsability and loyalty in services sector
formation, and as long as consumers are satisfied with the service offered,
the company image improves (Andreassen and Lindestad, 1998). Actually,
one can expect that commercial responsibility will have a strong impact on
consumers when forming corporate image. Each target audience will be
interested in different aspects of the company activity (Fombrun, 1996),
and will use different cognitive filters as well as giving more or less weight
to the different attributes according to its relationship and interests with
the organization (Caruana, 1997). As far as consumers are concerned, the
quality of the product and service received will be key factors in image creation,
since an important source in generating an impression is the shopping
experience, and global evaluation is a function of that experience
(Aydin et al., 2005). Therefore it is considered that:
Hypothesis 4: The perception of the commercial responsibility of a company
has a direct and positive influence on the corporate image.
On the other hand, perceptions of social responsibility can also give
substance to the image. Linking a brand with ethical and social matters
enforces its brand value (Berry, 2000; Rust et al., 2000), in so far as how
values that communicate respect towards the customer and enforce confidence
towards a company are transmitted (Maignan et al., 1999). The
relationship that exists between philanthropy and corporate reputation
has already been verified in previous studies. In some cases, company
rankings compiled by managers themselves are used, such as lists from
Fortune (Fombrun and Shanley, 1990) or Management Today (Brammer
and Millington, 2005). In others, experimental scenarios and methods are
worked on (Brown and Dacin, 1997; Lafferty and Goldsmith, 1999;
Mohr and Webb, 2005; Ricks 2005). In a real-life context the results may
vary, since communication on social responsibility is still at an initial
phase (Bigné et al., 2005) and there may be a lack of knowledge by consumers
which may explain that social and ethical matters are not taken
into consideration when the company is evaluated (Maignan and Ferrell,
2004). Nevertheless, with reference to experimental work, it is considered
that:
january · april 2011 · esic market