Content area
Full Text
ABSTRACT. Based on a consumer survey conducted in France, Germany, and the U.S., the study investigates consumers' readiness to support socially responsible organizations and examines their evaluations of the economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities of the firm. French and German consumers appear more willing to actively support responsible businesses than their US. counterparts. While U.S. consumers value highly corporate economic responsibilities, French and German consumers are most concerned about businesses conforming with legal and ethical standards. These findings provide useful guidance for the efficient management of social responsibility initiatives across borders and for further academic inquiries.
KEY WORDS: corporate benevolence, corporate citizenship, corporate ethics, corporate social responsibility, cross-cultural research, socially responsible consumer behavior
The past ten years have witnessed the gradual development of a research stream investigating how corporate social responsibility can help the marketing of the organization and its products to consumers. This trend started with Robin and Reidenbach's (1988) conceptualization of corporate social responsibility along with Varadarajan and Menon's (1988) depiction of cause-related marketing. Since then, the marketing potential of corporate responsibility initiatives has been investigated by a flourishing body of literature with a focus on issues such as corporate environmentalism (e.g., Drumwright, 1994; Menon and Menon, 1997), corporate citizenship (e.g., Maignan et al., 1999), and more generally from marketing actions with a social dimension (e.g., Brown and Dacin, 1997; Drumwright, 1996; Handelman and Arnold, 1999; Osterhus, 1997).
A few industry surveys (e.g., Business Wire, 1997; Jones, 1997; Lorge, 1999) and formal academic inquiries (e.g., Brown and Dacin, 1997; Handelman and Arnold, 1999) have yielded preliminary evidence revealing that corporate social responsibility may induce consumer goodwill toward the organisation. However, past surveys have either focused on limited aspects of corporate social responsibility such as community involvement or corporate giving (e.g., Brown and Dacin, 1997) or have considered corporate social responsibility in general without inquiring about consumers' understanding of this notion (e.g., Business Wire, 1997; Smith, 1996). As a result, past research has suggested that consumers are willing to support socially responsible businesses, but has not characterised the corporate behaviours that are perceived as significant of social responsibility by consumers. In addition, the concept of corporate social responsibility and most of the empirical work on the topic originate from the U.S....